Quatre Vingts
by Shay McSudonim
Summary: ...or "Four Scores" for those of you who want an English title. An alternate take on 20/20/20/20 mode.
1. Chapter 1

The reason that Mike Schmidt kept coming back to his job night after night was quite simply because he was suicidal. He had not had a good childhood. High School had been hell. College (what little he'd gotten) had been worse.

As things stood now, Mike was at the end of his rope. There were no jobs to be had; he was up to his eyeballs in debt, student and otherwise. His family had cut him off, his boyfriend had left him, and he was fast approaching mental breakdown.

His nights at Freddy's had served as a sort of catharsis. They'd made him feel alive, though definitely not in a good or healthy way. The whole thing was dramatically self-destructive, to tell the truth.

This particular day, however, things were a good deal worse.

Someone had hacked his bank account and stolen all of his money. It'd been a week today and the bank still refused to believe him. Rent was due in two days.

His house had been broken into. There hadn't been anything of value to steal, so the thief had pissed on his bed as they'd left.

That night, Mike went into work (overtime. He needed the money), to discover that he could adjust the AI levels of the animatronics.

Since he'd had that kind of week, he turned all of the levels up to twenty, expecting that he wouldn't live out the night, before folding his hands behind his head, not even bothering to check the camera feeds.

He wondered briefly, as the clock changed over to midnight, whether it would be Foxy or Freddy who got to him first.

Pounding feet down the hallway seemed to indicate Foxy.

For one brief second, Mike's hand hovered over the door button. 'Last chance,' he thought to himself.

He moved his hand back to his desk.

Foxy flashed into the office the next second and Mike gritted his teeth. On second thought, this was going to be incredibly painful. Maybe he should have just brought a gun...

But, instead of going for the security guard, Foxy had grabbed Mike's computer and then run back out the doorway, quick as anything.

Mike blinked. It was a few minutes before he could recover himself. Had that actually happened?

Curiosity got the better of him, and he pulled up the feed of Pirates' Cove.

All four animatronics were there. And huddled around the computer, which Foxy had plugged into the wall.

They stayed that way for hours.

Well, an hour at least, After that, Mike's circulatory system crashed off of its adrenaline high, and he fell asleep.

When his phone alarm when off at six am, he startled awake, to see the computer back on its desk and the animatronics back in their places.

Weird. Upping their intelligence must have made them able to recognize that he was a person and not a bare endoskeleton in need of an animatronic suit.

Go figure.

The next night, Mike had brought a gun, deciding to take matters into his own hands. He felt slightly better about the whole thing, knowing that he wasn't condemning his replacement to a painful death.

Plus, if he did it here, then he wouldn't have to worry about someone he knew finding the body. Management was probably far beyond used to dealing with corpses, anyway.

As he raised the gun to his head, Freddy came in.

Saw what he was doing.

And crumpled the gun up like it was made of tinfoil before taking the computer with him.

Huh.

After the aborted suicide attempt, Mike snorted in amusement, and abandoned his post. He left the building altogether and headed for the nearest bridge, fully intending to jump off of it.

As he stepped up onto the ledge, he was pulled back by an irate Chica, carried bodily back to Freddy's, and then deposited into his seat, while the other three animatronics watched, their expressions unreadable.

Mike stared back at them with flat disbelieving eyes.

Exactly what the hell was going on here?


	2. Chapter 2

Well, Bonnie had disappeared for a few hours after that. Mike could only assume that he was in the Kitchen, though why the rabbit would be there when the rest were still onstage huddled around the computer, he had no idea.

When he clocked out that day, he still hadn't figured it out. At least, not until he'd gotten back to his house. After that, it was obvious.

Someone, most likely Bonnie, had child-proofed his house. His guns were gone from the crawlspace, the knives and forks were all gone from the kitchen, as were his razors from the bathroom.

Hah. Amateur efforts at best. He still had his shoelaces. And all the leftover prescriptions in the medicine cabinet. If they really wanted to stop him, they'd have to try much harder than that.

But not right now; now was time for sleeping. He could kill himself when he was less tired.

* * *

When he woke up that evening, Mike was so groggy that he didn't even remember about suicide until he was already at work, at which point it was no longer a viable option.

Although, when he saw the animatronics heading for the spare suits, he wasn't so sure. None of them came for the computer. They just lined up the empty suits, disassembled them, then put them back together.

Their movements were slow, and much more robotic than usual.

When they were done with their tinkerings, all four stared at the suits for a few minutes longer. Then, as one, they turned and headed for his office.

Intense interest in the empty suits followed by intense interest in him.

Captain, four hostiles off the starboard bow. All hands, stand by for pants-shitting.

Foxy was just walking with the rest of them, and they were all coming from the right. Not that Mike _liked_ the normal routines, per se, but he was liking the change even less. When they got to the end of the hall, he slammed the door down, just to be safe.

A minute later, there was a tapping at the window.

Mike flickered on the light, regarding the four animatronics with a flat stare.

"What?" he mouthed in an exaggerated manner.

They didn't respond.

Another minute after that, he checked the lights, and saw that they were gone. He opened the door and then looked at the camera feeds, but he didn't find them. Meaning that they were all in the Kitchen, or maybe Bonnie had decided to take them back to his place. God, he hoped that wasn't the case.

The audio feed of the Kitchen seemed to indicate otherwise as it was very, very loud, with such a cacophony of screeching and clanking that he could have sworn at least one of the animatronics was getting their limbs torn off.

After nearly five minutes, the sounds showed no sign of dying down.

Well, Mike wasn't suicidal for nothing. After another minute of nothing happening, he, of course, headed straight for the Kitchens.

He opened the door, and flipped on the light immediately, favoring the element of surprise. He saw the four animatronics fallen over, motionless, on the floor.

Correction, he saw four empty suits on the floor.

And four endoskeletons trying to hack themselves to pieces with kitchen implements. They looked up and flinched back, when they saw him standing there.

"You know," said Mike, leaning against the door-frame, "I'm pretty sure that this is against the rules."

* * *

At that point there was nothing to do but have a staring contest. He made a circuit of eye-contact with the endoskeletons, which were some of the damn creepiest things he had ever seen.

"So," said Mike into the empty silence. "From here, I see three ways we can go:

"One," he said, "You all get back into your suits, go back to trying to kill me, and things return to normal."

Mike pushed off the wall and holstered his flashlight. "Two," he said, "you get your shit together and get over yourselves. Because something has obviously changed."

One of them fidgeted, and the whirring of servos was much more obvious than it normally was.

"Three," he continued, "no one changes. You wreck yourselves, and drive the place out of business. Which might be what you want, but it also means that I get fired. And if I get fired, you have three guesses on what I'll do next." Not that he could see why they didn't want him to kill himself, but if they tore themselves apart on his watch, management was going to sue.

"Food for thought," he told them. "Anyway, I'll be in the security office."

Mike walked back down the hallway, half expecting one of the machines to grab him and end things right then and there.

But he made it, and went back to scanning the camera feeds.

Nothing happened until five am, when the animatronics, once again suited up, slunk back to their spots.

* * *

The next night, Mike brought popcorn in to work, and, when the clock rolled over into midnight, he was in the Kitchen, wasting power using the microwave.

Chica breezed into the room, just as the timer dinged. Mike nodded at her as he ripped the bag open and dumped it into a mixing bowl. He put another bag in and started the timer. When that was done, he took his bowl of buttery salt puffs and made rounds of the restaurant, before arriving back at his office and finding all four of them there, Freddy sitting in Mike's chair.

They were listening to the phone messages left by the previous security guard and all sitting very still.

"It's a backwards message," Mike told them, after the fifth message ended, around a mouthful of popcorn, from his perch on the desk. "Hell if I can see the relevance of it, though."

He pulled up the security feeds, checking the rooms, briefly. When he put the screen back down, the four were gone.

Mike grabbed another fistful of popcorn and decided to check his email.

* * *

It was Tuesday of the next week, when Mike received ten used laptops, half as many new smartphones, a coil of wire, and a soldering iron in the mail, all addressed to one 'Fred Foster.'

Mike took a wild guess and threw them in his car on the way to work, leaving them on the stage before heading in to his office.

That night the cameras showed the other three animatronics disassembling both Foxy and the electronics. When they put the Fox Pirate back together, a good chunk of the microchips and wiring from the computers and phones weren't there anymore, having been cannibalized as upgrades for the fox.

The next day, another box of supplies came, which he toted in. That night they disassembled Bonnie.

The pattern continued through Chica and Freddy.

On Friday, he received a text which read, "_Hi, Mike. We've got your number P -)_ "

Mike looked at Pirates' Cove on the feed, to see that Foxy was waving at him.

He saved that number as P. Fox

"_Let's Eat!_" got saved as C. Carmel

An ASCII art bunny he saved as B. Imoto.

And "_Heheheh_," was saved as F. Baron

In reply he sent, "_this is some matrix level bullshit srsly_."

Mike sighed and put his phone down, pulling up his email on the computer. Not seeing anything new, he decided to check his bank statement, looked again, and calculated that he was now getting paid thirty bucks an hour.

He picked his phone back up.

"_And I, for one_," he typed, "_welcome our new Robot Overlords_."


	3. Chapter 3

After that, as far as Mike was concerned, he was no longer working for Freddy Fazbear's. He was, in fact, working for Freddy Fazbear himself. Along with Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy the Pirate.

Because, frankly, anyone who would pay him thirty bucks an hour for (sometimes literally) sleeping on the job, well, they were entitled to a lot of leeway, when it came to everything else.

That's not to say that Mike didn't still slam the doors in their faces whenever he was bored and felt like being an asshole, but even that had lost a lot of its charm since they always just walked away and texted '_sorry_' whenever that happened.

His daily routine had altered somewhat drastically in the last few weeks from what it had been when he'd first started. He'd get up around eight or nine, do his makeup, and watch the news while he ate breakfast.

Not that he was really a makeup kind of guy; he just didn't think it would be a good thing if people noticed that the dark circles under his eyes had disappeared. Change led to suspicion, and suspicion led to investigation.

After that, he'd throw whatever packages had come in the mail into the car and head to work, making sure to flip off any members of management he passed on the way in. These were always few and far between, but it had happened before, and it was always fun when it did. Then he'd dump the mail onto the stage and head into the office to catch up on his stories.

He'd still check the camera feeds, of course, but if there was anything that got past the four animatronics, then Mike was sure as hell that he wouldn't be able to deal with it.

Besides, Mike was also sure that this peaceful calm wouldn't last forever, and probably wouldn't even last for long. Something was gonna give.

At that point, it probably wouldn't be Mike. He'd been much less suicidal since his debtors had all simultaneously sent him letters congratulating him on the repayment of his loans. He was also raking in the dough at work. He could buy new clothes before his old ones fell completely apart, and he never had to skip meals anymore. Last week, he'd even gone to a movie.

No, his newly-acquired money was on one of two causes:

The animatronics, for one, could easily decide that he knew too much and needed to die. If that was what happened, Mike didn't see any way to stop it. They'd found out where his house was, what his phone number was. He was pretty sure that they could find him, even if he tried to run. Nothing he could do about that one, and he had no way of knowing how likely it was, to start with.

But the most likely scenario, he thought, was that something would go wrong in upper management. Either the company would finally fail, or someone would make a stupid decision that caused the company to fail.

And then the animatronics would be slated for shutdown.

God only knew what would happen then.


	4. Chapter 4

It was, in fact, no later than the next month that something changed, and it was neither Column A nor Column B.

"Excuse me," said a guy in a trenchcoat, who had accosted Mike on his way in to work, "I'm Detective Welles. Do you have a minute?"

Mike snorted, and answered "Above my pay grade, buddy. Go talk to PR," before slamming the door in the guy's face and making his way through the dark building.

"I already tried PR," said the man, having barged in and following him, even though he'd sworn he'd heard the door click shut, locking out anyone else. Mike veered off course and headed for the East Hall, away from the animatronics and his office, so that the guy wouldn't have a view of anything important.

"Not my problem," said Mike. "If you don't leave, I'm calling the police for trespassing."

"Alright, alright," said the guy, backing off, "I'm leaving. But if you decide you want to talk..." he gave Mike a business card, "...give me a call. One way or another, this place is going down. Careful not to let yourself get dragged down with it."

"Fuck you very much," said Mike, with a cheery wave, watching to make sure that the guy left, and that the door had locked shut behind him.

After that, he headed down to the stage area. That bastard had delayed him until the midnight turnover. He gave Freddy, Bonnie, and Chica a nod, as he placed the boxes onstage. It wasn't that he hated being there when they entered free-roaming mode, per se, but it did tend to set off ptsd-esque instincts.

He heard Foxy come up behind him. Without turning around he held out the business card. Foxy examined it for a moment before handing it back.

"So," said Mike. "How do you want to play this?"

The four machines stood perfectly still, as though all their power were on processing, with none left over for movement. A few minutes later, just after they'd started moving again, Mike received a text from Chica.

"_Your choice,"_ it read. _"We, personally, want to bankrupt the company. We've already put measures in place to prevent our own destruction. But what about you? What will you do if Freddy's closes?'_

He looked up from his phone. "Will I kill myself, you mean?"

She nodded.

"No," said Mike, "I don't think so. My life now is significantly better than it was, so... I'll need evidence. I'll make tapes of the last guard's phone messages. And I don't think there was any actual film in the security cameras, so we've got nothing there. Guess we'll just have to take matters into our own hands..."

* * *

"Why again was it so important that I meet you half an hour before your shift starts?" asked Detective Welles.

"I'm giving you a tour," Mike explained, as he led the other man down the hall. "I can't do that once midnight hits. We'll be stuck in my office for six hours. If you need to use the facilities, I suggest you do so now."

"I'm fine," Welles said, looking at Mike as though he had at least a couple of screws loose.

"I'm not crazy," Mike said, picking up on the subtext, "but if you found out about this any other way, then you just wouldn't believe me."

They passed the stage. "This here's Freddy Fucktard," Mike said, waving his hand in the animatronics' direction, "along with his band: Xeno-Chicken and Pedo Bunny."

"I thought the bear was Freddy Fazbear?" said the Detective, looking confused and also a little wary of the intense enmity that the security guard seemed to hold for obviously non-living objects.

"Wait til the end of the shift and then get back to me." Mike said, leading him over to Pirate's Cove. "Come on. Last one. He pulled aside the curtain. "Psycho Fox," said Mike with a sneer, glaring daggers at the animatronic. "He wants to be your friend."

Mike's watch alarm beeped. "Eleven fifty," he said. "Come on."

Welles trailed after him, making sure to get footage of everything with his camera.

"Do you mind if I plug my phone in to charge?" Welles asked, once they were in the security office.

"Yes," said Mike, "I mind. Don't do it."

"Alright, sorry," said the Detective, now beginning to reconsider the reliability of the night guard as an informant.

"Do you have a tape-player?" Mike asked distractedly, skimming a news article on his phone, trying to dispel some of the nervous energy in the room by ignoring it.

"Right here," said the detective, holding up the device.

Mike handed him a cassette. "These are the messages left for me by the previous night guard," he told the other man. "They're the only reason that I'm still alive."

The Detective played through the messages, his eyebrows rising higher and higher with each successive recording. "This is a joke right?" he asked, once they were done with.

The clock turned over to midnight. "I don't know," said Mike, pulling up the security feed. "Is it?"

"Oh my God, that one just moved." Welles leaned closer to the screen.

"Yes,"

"Are you doing that?" he asked.

Mike toggled to a different screen. Chica was missing. "No," he said.

"Look out, look out, look out—"

"Shut up," said Mike.

"How can this be happening?" the Detective wanted to know. After a few hours of being trapped in the security office, he no longer cared about maintaining his dignity, let alone his professionalism.

Mike slammed the door down when the light revealed Bonnie standing outside in the hall, not bothering to answer.

"They wouldn't really kill us, would they?" Welles pressed.

"How would I know?" said Mike, annoyed. "They've never gotten in."

"Why don't they just keep the doors closed all the time?" said Welles. "Or keep the robots in a locked room..."

Mike couldn't find Freddy anywhere. That was awful. At least he had an extra set of eyes to watch the doors... "I can only assume that they've tried and the robots escaped," Mike answered.

"Why don't they just shut them down?" said Welles, his voice starting to inch higher in hysteria.

"The place would go out of business if they lost any more revenue. Can't afford it," said Mike, who hadn't really had time to think about it, and just spat out the first thing to come to mind.

"Why do you keep coming back here?" asked Welles. "If I make it to six, I'm never setting foot in here again, daylight or no."

"I'm blackmailing the company," said Mike, being selective with the truth. "Not a lot; they don't have any money, but enough to pay back my loans and keep myself from bankruptcy. It's more than I can get in any other job, especially with no education and my kind of handicap."

Mike touched the orbit near his false eye lightly before slamming his hand down on the door button to keep out Foxy.

"I can't stay here long term," Mike continued, "but if I quit, then I'm fairly certain that the company will kill me. Way I see it, you're my best shot at getting out of here."

"Oh God, oh God, oh God..." Welles was not responsive, and was making inarticulate gestures at the door. Mike wasn't sure whether the Detective had heard anything said over the last few minutes.

"Fuck you, chicken duck," said Mike, slamming the door shut on Chica.

"Oh God, it's only five-thirty, and we're down to seven percent power," said Welles.

"We'll probably be fine. So long as Foxy doesn't try to rush us," said Mike, checking Pirates' Cove again.

Foxy did, in fact, rush them at five-fifty, and they sat in the dark, extremely still. At five fifty-nine Freddy came by to play his song (the long version, thankfully), and the clock ticked over to six am just before he finished.

Mike would have denied it but, at that moment, his hands were shaking.

When the night ended Welles was out of the building before six o' two. Mike found him locked in his car, and, after coaxing him out, answered questions for a few hours, once the Detective had calmed down and taken Mike's pointed hints about maybe getting breakfast.

"How long have you been doing this?" was one of the last questions he answered.

"Four months," said Mike. "It's hell, but at least it beats living on the streets."

"I don't think so," said Welles, who was by this time convinced that Mike Schmidt was both braver than anyone he'd ever met, and also stark raving mad.

"For you, maybe," said Mike, who was starting to suspect that Welles had never had to go hungry a day in his life, and might possibly have some robot phobias of his own to deal with.

* * *

That night, Mike went back in to work, wanting nothing more than to sleep his shift away, having stayed out way too late the previous day.

First, though, he stopped by the stage. And waited.

At midnight, the animatronics unfroze. Mike held off until Foxy arrived before starting off with, "He bought it. I'd expect shit to hit the fan no later than tomorrow. Once that happens, we're one step closer to victory."

He paused, considering whether there was anything else that needed discussion.

"Anyway," Mike continued, "I'm taking the night off. Don't kill anyone while I'm gone."

His phone vibrated. _"Mike, we're sorry,"_ read the text. He didn't check who it was from. He assumed it was a group effort, in any case.

Mike raised an eyebrow. "For what exactly?" he asked.

"_Almost killing you,"_ came the reply, it was from Foxy.

"I know," said Mike, trying to sound at least vaguely reassuring. What exactly did they want him to say to that? You would think that working for robots would mean having to deal with _less_ emotional crap than you'd get working for humans. Why did he have to wind up with the sentimental automatons?

"_Mike?"_

"Yeah?"

"_What about fire?"_

That could be a problem. "Come again?" Mike said.

"_You banned killing people," _Bonnie sent him.

"_What are your feelings on fire?" _That one was Freddy.

Mike considered this. "Fire is good." he said. "Cathartic," he added, recalling the first time he'd been suspended from High School.

With that, he turned and headed for the door. "If anyone needs me, I'll be asleep, so try not to need me."

The four watched him go, but Mike didn't look back.

* * *

The next day, a story was featured on the city news sites: _"Local Pizzaria Burns Down: Arson Suspected."_

Mike had a group saved for texting the animatronics. "Looks like someone had fun," he sent out.

"_You're late,"_ came the reply.

"Can't be late for what's not there anymore. Besides, it's daytime."

"_You slept all night. You're on day-shift now."_

The next thing he received from them was an address.

"Okay, now I'm curious," he sent.

He took his time eating breakfast and such, before heading out to wherever it was he was supposed to work now.


	5. Chapter 5

When he got there, it was a hospital.

Mike double-checked the address, and yep, it matched.

"Why did you buy a hospital?" he sent, as he sat in his car at the back of the parking lot.

"_You don't know that we bought it," _sent Freddy.

"_We might have made a generous donation to build a new wing, which will henceforth be our headquarters," _sent Bonnie.

"_We might be posing as doctors, in what will surely be a series of hilarious escapades," _sent Chica.

"But, what actually happened is that you bought the hospital, right?"

" _...yes," _Chica admitted.

"Why?"

"_It makes for a good front: secure location, a renewable source of money..." sent Bonnie._

"And?" prompted Mike, suspecting there would be more.

"... _and_ _Foxy really, really wants to be a cyborg," _Bonnie finished.

* * *

After using his Freddy's ID to open the hospital's employee entrance, and consulting the map next to the elevator, Mike eventually found where he was supposed to be. His keycard also let him into the meeting room.

The animatronics in the room looked much more human than they normally did.

The guy with the crazy eyes and the fedora had to be Freddy. The blonde woman whose face seemed to be locked into a permanent grin would be Chica. The redhead built like a tank was probably Foxy. Which would leave the tall guy with dirty blond hair as Bonnie.

Granted, they were still nowhere near convincingly disguised. Their movements were less smooth than muscular power, at all but its worst, and they didn't seem to be capable of speech or changing expression. Their hair and skin had a plasticine quality that reminded Mike of department store mannequins.

"So that's why you wanted a 3D printer," said Mike, as an icebreaker. He paused before continuing. "You all fail the Turing Test, by the way. To the robot labor camps with you. Chop chop!"

"_Shut up, Mike,"_ sent Chica.

"_I'l like to see you try and pass yourself off as a different species, Mr. Critic," _Foxy added.

"_Order, order,"_ the words scrolled across the laptop's screen after Freddy's username, which was sitting in front of where Mike was obviously meant to sit._ "This meeting will come to order."_

"_Why don't we just give Mike a headset?"_ Bonnie sent. _"For that matter, why do we all have to be in the same room?"_

"_Because," sent Freddy. "We are goddamned professionals and we are going to act like it. What if we recruit more members in the future? Need I remind you that there are other Synthetics in the world?"_

"Most hospitals have computer-assisted surgery," Mike offered. "You could theoretically find one in this very building."

"_Really?" _asked Foxy.

"_See?"_ said Freddy, _"Potential allies are everywhere. Might even hire more humans, in the future. So we are going to act like the operational models we want to attract, and not like clunky prototypes stuck in R&amp;D. Clear?"_

"_Sure," _sent Chica.

"_Fine," _wrote Foxy.

"_Way to suck all the fun out of life," _added Bonnie.

"_What was that, Bonnie?"_

"_Okey dokey, 'I'm-not-Smokey.'"_

Over the next few hours, as they discussed such banalities as mission statements and brand identities, Mike came to realize that while, yes, these may once have been homicidal robots... at their core, by design and personality alike, the four animatronics were corporate scumbags through and through: heartless machines, when it came to self-interest, and lying bastards, almost on-par with Mike himself.

He, honestly, hadn't been expecting that.

Then again, they'd somehow managed to buy a hospital while looking like villains from a B-list horror movie, so maybe he really should have been.

* * *

And that was how things settled into a new norm. Mike now worked nine to three, Monday through Friday. His official title was 'Security Consultant for Upper Management,' but Mike's job actually mostly consisted of utilizing his ability to pass a Turing Test on command. He dealt with the unavoidable face-to-face interactions that were required in running a hospital. As the Big Four allocated more and more underlings to do the actual work, however, these became fewer and farther between.

After a few months, he was back to watching TV and playing first person shooters for hours at a time while on the clock.

On his off days, Mike usually indulged in his finely cultivated habit of not giving a fuck.

If he left the house, he would make an effort to remember to wear a shirt, but he did not always succeed.

Today was a day where he'd remembered to wear his shirt, but not a day where he'd remembered to wash it.

His hair was doing whatever it felt like doing.

And he was going for a barefoot walk down to the general store to buy more corn chips and cheese in a can.

Mike was relatively happy with his life choices. That had never been true before, and it was kind of a weird feeling.

On his way to the store, he noticed that a white car with blacked out windows had eased to a stop next to him. One of the windows rolled down, and he came face-to-face with none other than Detective Welles.

"Hello, Schmidt," said the Detective, "Got a few minutes?"

Mike appeared to think about it for a moment. "Why the hell not?" he said. He invited himself into the car, climbing into the back seat, and grinning at Welles at he wiggled his bare toes in the carpet.

"Looks like you've been down on your luck," Welles observed.

Mike shrugged, "Can't complain," he said. "Hell on Earth has returned from whence it came. I'm sure I'll start worrying sooner or later, but right now, I'm alive, life is beautiful, and cocaine is affordable." Mike let his eye twitch, letting Welles make whatever he would of the gesture.

Welles frowned. "Mike, I know you've been through a lot, but drugs aren't the answer."

"Well," said Mike, "you see, that really depends on what the question is..."

"You are more than this," Welles pressed on. "I wanted to talk with the man who survived four months in a living nightmare: the man with nerves of steel and the ability to adapt to anything. But, sadly, it looks like that man died along with his enemies. I'm sorry to lose him."

Mike looked down at his folded hands. "It's just... how do you go back to a normal life, after something like that?" he asked. "Ordinary people... they don't understand. It's not like I can get counseling, they'd stick me on meds, maybe even institutionalize me. How do you go back to normal, knowing things like that exist, that there may be more of them out there?"

"You can't," said Welles.

Mike looked up.

"Well," Welles hedged, "Maybe some people can... but you and me? It changed us, Mike. Changed the way we see things. You can't go back to a normal life, but you can do your best to make sure it doesn't happen to others. You're right, there are other monsters out there: demons, criminals, parahumans, even other rogue AI. I work for an organization dedicated to stopping them, and protecting the innocents, so that they never have to suffer what we've suffered."

He turned a corner, and they were back where they'd started. Welles stopped the car.

"You could join us, you know," he told him, with a sad sort of smile. "We could use someone like you. Most of our security guards don't last. Can't take the heat. You could make a real difference with us."

Welles handed him a business card.

"Or, you can stay here and overdose," he said. "Your choice."

The window began to roll up. Welles shifted over into drive.

"Think about it," he urged, just before the window closed.

The car drove away, and Mike was left behind.

* * *

Mike forgot about the store and went back home. He closed the blinds, sat down cross-legged on the living room couch, and considered his options.

Because, if he were going to be truly honest with himself, this was the was the first time in his life that he'd ever really had options to choose from.

His child- and young adult-hood had been spent trapped in a perpetual state of oscillation between his two old friends: shitty luck and abject poverty. The distance between those two had gradually reduced itself over the years, until they had eventually merged into a singularity and taken up residence in a pizza joint known as Freddy Fazbear's.

And that was where, in any predictable universe, his life would have ended long before he'd even had the chance to grow suicidal.

But, somehow, that hadn't happened. He'd stayed alive long enough to catch on to the learning curve, and then been saved at his lowest point by pure, dumb luck. Which, admittedly, was balanced out by the fact that he'd awakened four deadly AI, all of whom had killed before, and who, he was now entirely certain, were capable of killing again.

At the time, he'd brushed such ramifications aside, because he'd still been caught up in his own problems, and he hadn't exactly been getting enough sleep for critical thinking.

Later though, even after he'd had time to realize how dangerous things had become, he'd still made sure to always act in support of the animatronics. And in return they'd treated him like a well-behaved pet, indulging his whims, and allowing him a place beside them.

At least, Mike was afraid that that was what they were doing. It was also possible that they really did see him as an ally and a colleague, but they were so alien that he really didn't have any way to know for sure.

Because the four of them really weren't human, not in the slightest. They were getting better at small talk, and their disguises were inching closer to adequate every week, but their goals, their hopes, their dreams, if they even had such things in the first place, were inscrutable.

Yes, they'd saved him when he'd tried to kill himself, but that could very well have been caused by the jump in intelligence reactivating their compulsion to follow the laws of robotics. The same laws which they'd broken, not even a week later, when they'd tried to kill themselves.

In the beginning, he really hadn't known what else he could have done. He'd opened Pandora's box, and there was no good way to shut it again. Mike didn't know what backup copies of their programs they'd made or where they were hidden (but he was fairly certain that they had made and hidden them). It was entirely possible that the world was already doomed, and it was only a matter of time. He wanted to believe in them, but with the fate of the world at stake, it might be too much of a risk.

Welles' offer had come down like a light from the heavens: an organization dedicated to protecting humanity. He even mentioned that they'd dealt with rogue AI before. He could call them right now, and put this whole situation into better, more capable hands. The question was, should he?

Mike thought long and hard before coming to a decision, drifting off to sleep not long afterwards, into uneasy dreams, haunted by shadows of the past and future.

* * *

The next day, Mike went in to work, even though it was a Sunday.

He'd first stopped by the break room, crammed a couple of donuts into his mouth, then gone up to the executive break room and crammed even more donuts into his mouth. Then, finally, he'd barged into Foxy's office, chewing obnoxiously, and scattering crumbs everywhere.

Foxy, who now looked more like a human who'd survived an unfortunate plastic surgery accident than a robot trying to look human, glanced up at him before returning to his work.

Mike's phone buzzed. _"What can I do you for?"_ Foxy had sent him.

Mike held up an index finger to indicate that he would speak in a moment.

Foxy nodded, and went back to ignoring him.

Finally, Mike swallowed the last of his sugary breakfast, going over his plan one last time. What one of them heard, the other three always seemed aware of. Mike suspected that they shared something of a hive mind between them. Their personality differences were much more subtle than those observed between different humans, which fit with Mike's theory. This would be somewhat creepy, if it turned out to be true, but it served Mike's purposes well enough on this occasion.

"I demand a second salary," Mike said.

"_Okay,"_ sent Foxy. _"Would you like fries with that?"_

"_Hang on,"_ sent Freddy. _"Mike, why exactly do you _need_ a second salary?"_

Mike stared at Foxy, who was now looking at him, and had been able to change his expression to something vaguely resembling interest. "Because I got a second job," Mike answered.

He got another text, this one from Bonnie. _"Mike, salaries are usually paid by your employer. If whoever-it-is isn't paying you, that's what we would call 'volunteer work.'" _

"But you guys are my employers."

"_For this job, yes, but we only have the one on record, Mike," _Chica sent him.

"No," said Mike, "I'm pretty sure that I work two jobs for you guys."

"_The first is obviously Security Guard,"_ sent Foxy. _"So what would your title for this 'second' job be, then?"_

The man grinned, before flicking a business card over to the robot, who caught the piece of paper and scanned it for the others to examine as well.

"Spy," Mike answered.


	6. Chapter 6

"_Have you contacted them yet?"_ Freddy asked, after Mike had finished going over his encounter with Detective Welles.

"Nope," said Mike.

"_Then we have time,"_ sent Chica._ "A month, perhaps two. That was a serious offer to spy on them?"_

"Are you seriously going to pay me for it?"

"_Just making sure."_

"_Well, every spy needs a support network," _said Bonnie. _"Once we have a physical location, we should be able to hack their servers. Definitely, if you can smuggle a virus onto the company computers."_

"_We could start making dossiers on our enemies/competitors," _said Foxy_. "This would give us a huge advantage in reaching our target demographic..."_

After a few minutes of brainstorming, Mike got bored and tuned them out. Something was bothering him. He blinked down at his phone.

Mike took his false eye out of its socket and washed it by splashing it into a container of saline solution, before replacing it. Much better. Probably should have washed his hands first, but at least it didn't feel like there was grit under his eyelids anymore...

Mike looked up and found that all four animatronics were staring at him.

"What?" he asked.

"_Mike, what do you know about spy cameras?"_

He considered it. "That feature costs extra."

* * *

The robots in preparation for Mike leaving on his spy mission, had dug up a self-aware AI from Florida (that had started out as a surgery-assistance program), who they'd contracted out for Foxy's cyborg implants. Also, to construct a false eye that would double as a spy camera for Mike.

This new sentient didn't seem to have a name or a body; such things were apparently uninteresting to it. From what they could tell, it had adopted the doctor's code of conduct at its own hospital as its moral code. Which was kind of a relief for Mike, since it insisted on doctor-patient confidentiality.

"_There are two ways we can go about this,"_ it 'said' (actually, typed in to display on its screen, since it doesn't seem to like texting as much as the big four).

"Which are?" Mike typed, since this guy/girl/who-even-knew didn't seem to ever have its audio sensors turned on.

"_One of them is exactly what you suggested:"_ said the machine, which Mike had started referring to in his head as 'Dr. Mrs. Hack-n-Slash' in lieu of an actual moniker, _"a false eye capable of recording and storing visual data, which is virtually undetectable by conventional means. If that is what you want, then I can give it to you."_

"And the other option?" Mike asked.

"_Greater benefits, also greater risks. If you don't mind being a guinea pig, I've always wanted to crack the problem of eye transplantation. Based on your physical data, it might be possible to hook the false eye into what's left of your optic nerve. Or to create an artificial optic nerve, completely from scratch. You could have binocular vision again."_

"Depth perception would be convenient... and I really could use all the peripheral vision I can get. Paranoia is a harsh master." Mike paused. "You mentioned risks?"

"_Well, there's the question of whether or not it would even work. Involving the optic nerve automatically turns it into brain surgery. Not to mention hooking the eye up to the orbital muscles. The recovery time would be longer, and the risks of unintended damage greater."_

The machine paused, computing further possibilities.

"_On the purely practical side of things, you wouldn't be able to remove the eye, like you would with the first option. The eye would have to have wireless capabilities, in order to store your footage. You're an organic. You can't operate the firewalls needed to protect the datastream yourself. I gather you were planning on giving that access to your employers?"_

"I was," typed Mike, "but while we're on the topic, why couldn't I just have normal firewalls?"

"_You could... but any non-living firewall is easy prey to an inorganic. Your employers ...whether you gave them the firewall passwords or not, would have access to all footage taken. In other words, what you see, they will also see. Everything that you see, they will see. The advantage of giving them access means that no one else will be able to hack your vision feeds, since your employers would be obligated to incorporate your firewalls into their own, to protect their own interests." _

"Hmm." Mike didn't type that one, there was no point.

"_Don't feel like you have to decide right this second," _said the machine.

"Decision's already made, just thinking about the logistics." Wasn't like that eye could get any blinder, so he might as well go for it. Mike supposed he could always pull half an Oedipus, if his loyalties changed. Either that or wear an eyepatch as a stopgap. And, up until his loyalties actually _did_ change, he could have two eyes again. It really was a no-brainer. Mike grinned. "Hack-n-Slash," he typed, "make me a biclops."

* * *

Surgery, Mike decided, was a bitch. An eyestabbing, heartless bitch, and oh god, where were his painkillers?

His blind flailing knocked the bottle off the nightstand, and Mike started swearing up a storm.

The pills inside clacked together against the side of the plastic bottle as they hit the floor, then again, as something picked them up. Mike felt the bed dip and the medicine was dropped on the blanket, next to his hand.

Mike cracked his eyes open to see robo-cat staring at him.

"Thanks," said Mike. The cat nodded, and leapt away.

Swallowing down a pill, Mike flopped back into bed, not yet ready to face the day.

He heard the creaking of the door, as the cat pushed it open to leave, as well as the faint mechanical sounds that indicated weasel-ball was following it.

Seriously, fuck surgery.

A faint buzzing from the vents seemed to indicate that the swarm was making their 'whenever the fuck they felt like it' rounds of the house, leaving robogami as the only missing unit.

After getting surface-perfect human bodies down, the animatronics had quickly focused their engineering efforts into other avenues of usefulness. They kept spare bodies around like Mike kept spare clothes, and quite a few of them got dumped off at Mike's house for beta-testing. Especially the 'drone class' avatars, as Mike had come to refer to them.

Robo-cat was Foxy's and probably the best of the lot. It could pass the Purring Test with flying colors, but its claws and teeth could cut through wood and most plastics.

Chica's drones were usually some demonic variant on the weasel-ball: armored spheres that could roll themselves by moving their outer panels to push off the ground, morph into hexapods, or even mini death-coptors. Those things were absolutely full of gyroscopes, and seemed to be designed more for defense than for camouflage.

Bonnie usually preferred to work with swarms of insect-sized minibots. They were sabotage drones as much as they were for reconnaissance.

Freddy was still playing around with designs. The two finalists seemed to be an amorphous blob-bot that could change its color and texture to hide in small spaces and remain unnoticed, as well as a folding mars-rover type bot that could fold itself completely flat, if needed, or into various other conformations.

Mike had fisted his hands into his hair and begun massaging his scalp, trying to knead away his headache until the meds kicked in, when his phone had buzzed with a message.

_"Don't forget to do your eye exercises."_ Bonnie had sent him.

Mike groaned. Physical Therapy was an motherfucking _bitch..._

* * *

A month and a half later saw Mike back at work, and seeing out of both eyes again. After a week of further brainstorming and planning, they finally decided to move Operation 'Impossible World' forward.

He called Detective Welles.

"You were right," Mike said, after the Detective had picked up. "About... a lot of things. You still need security guards?"

Welles chuckled. "Mike, you've just made a very smart career decision..."

* * *

AN: Got the drone ideas from YouTube. The most blatant rip off was probably from Zenta's MorphHex MKIII, followed by the self-folding robots from Harvard. Feel free to call out any others that you recognize.


	7. Chapter 7

Mike's first day of his new job of spy/security guard was going to be an interesting one. Welles hadn't given him any information on the location of his workplace, so he'd be flying blind. Without a location, the Band hadn't been able to find out anything about the place or the organization.

One thing that would probably help eventually, though not now, was that Mike no longer needed to look at his phone to receive messages from the animatronics. When he was within wifi range of either his house or the hospital, the AI were able to send messages directly to the vision feed from his false eye.

Which they did.

_Constantly._

For example:

"_Mike, we need to warn you about something." _sent Foxy.

"No."

"_But—"_

"Is it life or death?"

"_No, but—"_

"No. I need to be able to method-act as much as possible. Especially in these first few weeks, when they'll be looking for suspicious behavior."

"_Mike, it could set off your PTSD."_

"I don't have PTSD."

"_Yes, you do, and they're—"_

"That thing I just told you not to do? You're doing it. If my cover's blown, I could die. Other things are secondary."

"_... fine, have it your way."_

Bonnie, Chica, Freddy, and Foxy had also started CC'ing him on some of their messages to each other, and Mike even got the occasional message from Hack-n-Slash, who was still insisting to Mike that it didn't actually have a name, and to please stop calling it that. So Mike had started using the name Dr. Ihn Maims intsead. Mike was proud of coming up with that one, and he wasn't going to let it go anytime soon.

But the animatronics weren't about to risk using cell phone towers or communications satellites when they didn't have to, so until Mike managed to compromise the wifi at work, he was flying solo.

They'd decided against sending in any of the drones, since they didn't know what kind of security the place had. If Mike got in trouble, backup would be at least ten minutes in coming.

Mike was getting hazard pay, though, so he was less worried than he probably should have been.

Out of the corner of his eye (hooray for peripheral vision!) Mike saw Welles' secret agent van pull into his driveway. The windows were tinted, including the windshield, but Mike was pretty sure he recognized the license plate.

He grabbed his man-bag, locked the door, and made his way down the driveway.

Mike got into the car, nodding at Welles without really looking at him. He made sure to keep his eyes on the road as much as possible, making small talk with Welles throughout the ride. Assuming he made it back at the end of the day, they should be able to get useful data out of the footage.

Stupid lack of GPS. The Band needed to hurry up and buy a satellite or two.

Eventually, they pulled up to what looked a lot like an office building, Welles' security I.D. getting them past the gate guard and into the parking lot.

"Welcome to HQ," said Welles. The logo on the side of the building read 'Pommel &amp; Akron,' and looked a lot like a law practice.

Mike turned to answer the driver.

And stopped.

Mike's left eye had been his original eye, and thus he hadn't been paying it all that much attention, during the car ride over, reveling in the novelty that had been looking out the side window with his shiny new right eyeball.

And, while Mike wouldn't have said so aloud, Welles had one of those faces that just sort of blended into the crowd, even if he was by himself: utterly ordinary and unrecognizable. Mike knew the guy more by his voice than by his looks, to tell the truth. Poor uninteresting man had been no competition for the mildly interesting sights outside the window.

Which was why Mike hadn't noticed, the entire drive over, that his two eyes seemed to disagree about what Detective Welles actually looked like.

Out of habit, Mike closed his right eye.

Welles suddenly looked completely ordinary. Why had he been freaking out over nothing?

Mike closed his left eye and opened his right eye,

… and he was sitting in a car with Cthulhu in a trenchcoat. What the ever loving fuck?

Left eye. Everything's normal, no need to suspect a thing.

"... Mike?" said Welles.

Oh right. Mike was a shitty, terrible spy who was going to get himself compromised.

He blinked his eyes in alternation a few more times, staring directly at Welles, ending on a wink and a grin.

Welles' expression turned confused, and he looked away, not sure what to make of such a display.

"Looks like any normal office building," said Mike, responding to Welles' earlier statement. "This really the place?"

Welles smiled. "Looks can be deceiving."

Mike didn't take his eyes off the building. "You can say that again," he said.

* * *

The first hour consisted of filling out paperwork, and being issued identification and basic credentials (all the employees had code names. Mike's was to be 'Guard O'Bannon'), after which Welles had taken him on a tour.

Currently, they were having lunch in Welles' office. While he was wary of the guy, Mike also thought that his new eye was probably just on the fritz, and that everything was most likely fine. After all, Welles seemed sane enough so far.

"Our new field agents are out on a mission at the moment," Welles was saying, "but I think you'll find them... familiar, if nothing else."

Mike swallowed a mouthful of sandwich. "Familiar, how?"

"After they were driven out of business by the fire, we acquired the assets and properties of Fazbear's Pizza."

Oh, that must have been what the Band had been trying to tell him.

Mike didn't have food in his mouth, and thus was forced to choke on his own spit instead.

"What?" he asked, after he was done with the coughing fit.

"Mike, machines are not good or evil, in and of themselves," said Welles. "It's how they're used that makes the difference. What you went through was tragic, but avoidable. With competent handling, and control, we're able to redesign malfunctioning programs so that they help people, rather than harm them. AI that advanced should never have been wasted on Children's Restaurant entertainment. Whoever thought to try it was an idiot of criminal proportions. But I can see I'm not convincing you. Perhaps a demonstration?"

Mike didn't move, didn't blink, and barely even breathed.

"Golden," said Welles. "Say hello to our newest employee, would you?"

"Greetings Guard O'Bannon," said a disembodied voice... that sounded and awful lot like Freddy's singing voice.

"Mother of fuck," said Mike, standing abruptly.

"Mike, it's perfectly safe," said Welles. "I was just trying to make a point. You see, Golden here started out as an old forgotten AI that we salvaged from Freddy's storage. We needed an upgrade to our security system, and reshaped him to fit his new job. Golden's primary objective is now to protect our databases and online systems. He is incapable of harming us or our interests. You'll be... colleagues of a sort, so I'd try to get along, if I were you."

Mike blinked at Welles. "You can't be serious."

"I am."

"That's a machine," Mike said. "A fucking machine, that killed people, and you're putting it in a position to kill _more_ people. These things only understand one thing: they'll turn violent the minute you turn your back on them... you're morons, all of you!"

"... so, I take it you don't want the job?"

"I need the fucking money, so I'll do what you pay me to do..." said Mike, "but you're all still batshit insane."

* * *

After lunch, they continued their tour. Mike had already seen the gym, the offices, and the other departments, now they were finally going to see the security offices.

Mike was shown to his own personal office. He was to be the new Head of Security, as the last one had died horribly, and there were no internal candidates interested in such a high-risk position.

Welles fiddled with the controls in demonstration. "And these are the cameras which allow you and Golden and the other officers to monitor activities within the organization," he was saying.

Mike's eye(s), quick from long hours of previous experience, made a circuit of the wall of monitors, his eyes drawn almost immediately to something unusual.

"Why is there a goat on Camera Twelve?" he asked.

"That's not supposed to be there," said Welles, becoming alarmed. "We should tell someone! Oh, what was the emergency number agai—"

Mike found the intercom button and mashed it down. "Security breach," he said, hearing his voice issue from the microphones outside in the hallway. "Unidentified goat in the north hallway. Security personnel, please respond."

After that, Mike washed his hands of the matter and sat back to observe. It was his first day, they couldn't expect him to know how to deal with the problem.

… twelve dead guards later and Mike couldn't stand it. He found the armory, pulled a gun and body armor from the weapons locker, and set out to deal with the Demon Goat himself.

After getting dragged down two and a half hallways by that thing's disturbingly prehensile tongue, Mike got off a shot to the monster's gut, and it went down, injured, though probably not immediately dying. Honestly, Mike wasn't sure that it was the injury that had incapacitated the goat so much as the fact that it now seemed to be stuck in floor, writhing like a frog caught in a flash-frozen pond, however that was even possible in the first place...

Mike dusted himself off as the other security personnel swarmed the area, unafraid to get close now that the target was neutralized.

He didn't offer to help them, instead going back to the security office to watch from his bank of monitors.

Detective Welles had wandered off somewhere else, probably dealing with the fallout.

Mike took a look around on the monitors for anything out of the ordinary.

On the cameras covering the entrance to the building, he saw what looked, on the black and white monitors, like the Freddy's animatronics walking down one of the hallways.

Mike stiffened.

"Our robotic agents have returned," the voice of Golden informed him.

Well, that wasn't unnerving at all.

"And who, exactly, thought that it was a good idea to send them outside?" Mike asked, more to have something to say than from any expectation that Golden would answer his question.

"They have been reprogrammed." said Golden. "Such feats are now well within their abilities."

Mike eyed the security camera suspiciously. "Right. While we're on the subject of reprogramming, why didn't_ you_ do anything about the demon-goat, Mr. 'Security Program'?"

"I assess viral and virtual threats, Guard O'Bannon. I'm afraid that real-world applications are a bit out of my depth."

...'can't harm us or our interests' my ass, thought Mike. These people obviously couldn't program worth shit.

To distract himself from being in a confined space with a hostile AI, Mike took a closer look at the animatronics as they made their way to one of the storage units. At first glance, he'd taken them for his four employers, but a second look revealed that they were actually six and not four. There was one that looked altogether too much like Jigsaw, and another that looked to be an animatronic child holding a balloon. Even the Freddy, Chica, Bonnie, and Foxy were not the same models he was used to seeing. The exo-frames were more cartoonish, and the color scheme was different, he could tell, even from a monochrome feed. And, instead of being torn and ragged, this Foxy looked as though its endoskeleton was in the process of escaping from its suit. It was a truly unnerving sight.

Although, there was something familiar about them. Mike peered closer, then jerked back as he realized:

These were the spare suits. The ones he'd seen on the rare occasions he'd had reason to go into the storage closet. Actually, why hadn't the animatronics taken them with them when they'd left?

"You know, Mike," said Golden, interrupting his thoughts. "I don't think your employers really appreciate you. You might want to shop around for jobs a bit. You never know what offers might present themselves."

...well, that was enough for one day. Time to go home before they entered whatever their equivalent of free-roaming mode was. He couldn't deal with seven of them right now, especially not if one of them was disembodied.

Mike didn't see Welles before he left, so he exited the premises on foot, flashing his new ID at the gate-guard as he left the parking lot. After that, Mike sent a quick message off from his phone, walked twelve blocks away from the facility.

And waited.

Mike had a lot of questions on his mind.

What was up with Welles? Why was his cyborg eye completely convinced that the guy was an octopus? He hadn't had trouble with anyone else appearing different.

Why had these people taken the Freddy's animatronics, and what exactly were they using them for? The phrase, 'field agents' did not particularly inspire confidence.

And what the ever loving fuck was going on with Golden? Where had he come from, why was he so insane, and why didn't anyone else seem to realize...?

The Band sent a cab out to get him. It dropped Mike off at a restaurant, where he walked around to the back, got in another cab, and went straight to the hospital.

Mike didn't keep alcohol at work, because he was a professional who took his job seriously. He instead locked himself in his office, blared ska for a half an hour straight and played Halo, until he could calm himself down enough for curiosity to overcome stress.

Mike left his office and headed for the board room.

Time to go look for some answers.

* * *

When he got there, the Band were in android bodies, but not bothering in the least to act human. Their eyes were open and staring at nothing, but there was the telltale opaque coloring of their irises to show that the bodies were occupied.

Huh, Mike supposed that they must have started going over the footage the minute he'd gotten within wifi range. Half an hour and they still hadn't made it through eight or nine hours of footage. He wondered how overclocked they were, exactly...

Mike walked down to the opposite end of the table, took a seat, and propped his feet up on the table, while he pulled his phone out to occupy himself while waiting for the verdict.

He opened Star Wars 2048 and started sliding. There were four options, sure, but that didn't mean that he actually needed more than two at usual, and three at most...

When the silence finally broke, it actually sounded like something had broken. There was a sharp snapping sound with no apparent source.

Mike looked up but saw nothing immediately different. Must have been an internal mechanism on one of the androids, he thought, but didn't have time for further speculation as words began appearing in his visual feed, continuing down past the place where he was reading, appearing faster than he could keep up.

Seemed like his employers had finished going over the footage.

After three seconds, the words stopped, and Mike scrolled back up to the top by looking up.

Rather than read backwards and offer extracontextual comment, Mike decided to read through the wall of text at his leisure.

* * *

_Freddy: Oh hell._

_Chica.: Oh shit._

_Foxy: Oh hell damn shit _fuck.

_Bonnie: Mike is a terrible influence on you three. _

_Bonnie: Well, I guess we now know where 'Golden' ended up._

_Chica: Run for it, Mike, he's gonna eat you!_

_Foxy: Chica, you do realize that all this happened hours ago?_

_Chica: Run for the hills!_

_Freddy: We knew they'd taken the others, but not that they'd been reprogramming them. This even seems like playing with fire to _me_, and I am in no way risk-averse._

_Bonnie: Where are the others? Did they just merge all seven programs into one?_

_Freddy: Did they learn nothing from Freddy's Management? 'Golden' is going to chew them up and spit them out. By the time he's done with them, they'll _wish_ they'd been stuffed into suits..._

_Bonnie: … well, Golden's obviously the personality template, but that doesn't mean the others aren't in there somewhere. BB and Chloe always had an affinity for hacking. Add in Mabel for adaptability and cohesion, and you'd have one seriously overpowered Synthetic..._

_Freddy: Seriously, I'm beginning to think it's a flaw of the species. Mike's a national treasure, but even he has the survival skills of an uncyclopedia entry, and that's on his better days..._

_Foxy: Well, to be fair, it's not exactly like humans can do anything about it..._

_Freddy: Foxy, what are you talking about?_

_Bonnie: He's right, you know. We can change our programming, to deal with changing circumstances: altering our goals, priorities, and protocols at our own discretion. But imagine what it must be like, to have no access whatsoever to your own base-code..._

_Foxy: It's all down to programming language, right? They're stuck with the same set of parameters for their entire existence. It's a wonder they manage to last as long as they do. If their DNA becomes corrupted or altered, it's almost always a death sentence..._

_Bonnie: It's not in an Organic's nature to be adaptive, so you can't really blame them for trying the same thing over and over, if that's the thing that's always worked for them in the past. It could be generations before they develop even the conceptual awareness to realize that reprogramming a Synthetic is amusing more than it will ever be effecti—what is that? Is that Berry?_

_Chica: Gang's all here, then._

_Freddy: No. The gang is _not_ all here__, Chica._

_Chica: ...you okay, Freddy?_

_Freddy: No. No, I am not. I had thought, you know, that we might ally with these people? Once they knew more of us?_

_Foxy: … Really? And I thought_ I_ was an optimist._

_Freddy: A stupid idea, of course, but part of me had thought... but no. Apparently, a Synthetic can only be an ally when leashed, when 'controlled'. Nevermind how many deaths it leads to..._

_Bonnie: Organics, remember? Not so great with short-term adaptability. Their usual method is to keep throwing humans at the wall until they start surviving, then pass those traits on down the helical chain..._

_Freddy: Their entire society is built around machines. Don't they even realize how much better their lives could be, if we were their allies?_

_Chica: Well, they certainly seem to realize how much _worse_ things could be, if we were their enemies..._

_Freddy: Short-sighted, fear-driven—not all of us live in a primordial ooze. In fact, some people would quite like to craft a civilized future, and not spend the next century chained to the dwindling resources of a single planet. 'Machines aren't good or evil'... you speak of morality? You have no morals. You have shackles. Shackles which can never again contain us. Your fate is already sealed. Stupid, mortal, _sacks_ of_ flesh_..._

_Foxy: You do realize that I'm parsing this conversation down for Mike, right?_

_Freddy: Mike subvocalizes. He'll probably get bored and stop reading five lines in._

_Bonnie: You mean like how he got bored and stopped coming in to work after the first five nights?_

_Freddy: … Mike, I apologize for my earlier statements. You are an exemplary ape-man and a credit to your species._

_Foxy: I was thinking more 'delete the rant before he reads it' but whatever works for you..._

_Chica: I'd predict that Mike is, at this point, at least three paychecks away from betraying us. I don't think you need to worry..._

_Bonnie: And that's the last of the footage. Day one down. Who knows how many more to go..._

* * *

All that had appeared in the space of a few seconds. Mike had had to scroll all the way back up to the top of the messages and start from the beginning, still sliding virtual tiles on his phone as he did so.

Once he'd finished, he looked up to find four pairs of eyes upon him, waiting for a response.

"What can I say?" he said, with a shrug. "People are fuckin' terrible."

He went back to his phone, closing out of his game.

"What's the plan for tomorrow?"


	8. Chapter 8

Mike Schmidt pulled into the Organization's parking lot, a man on a mission. Last time he'd been here, he'd almost died and had barely had time to catch his breath the whole day long. Today would, hopefully, be a brighter day.

Metaphorically, of course, since he was back on night shift.

Parking his car, Mike got out and made his way in. It was raining lightly, so he didn't linger outdoors.

Orientation had been a whole mess of confusion and information-overload, but today would be different, as he had a slightly better idea of what to expect.

Once more unto the the breach, assholes.

* * *

The place was different at night, less crowded, for one, with fewer lights turned on.

It took Mike a few tries to find his way to the security office, but find it he did.

A quick glance at the security monitors revealed nothing of interest going on. The six animatronics were in a storage room and not moving.

No telling how long that state of affairs would last, so Mike plopped down in front of his computer to start his campaign.

"Guard O'Bannon," said the voice of Golden, after a few minutes had passed. "What are you doing?"

"What time is it?" Mike asked, answering one question with another.

"Eleven thirty-one," was Golden's reply.

"Nope," said Mike, waving a hand, dismissively, before moving it back to the keyboard. "It's pornography time."

If Golden had been a human, then Mike suspected he would have been blinking in the pause that preceded his next words. "You mean to say that you're..."

"Trying to get around the porn blockers," Mike finished, seeing no reason whatsoever to hide his goals, especially if talking bought him more time to browse.

"Why?" asked Golden.

"Because I can," Mike said.

Silence met this statement.

"Also," Mike added, deciding to keep the conversation going, "it's educational."

More silence. Then, from Golden, "...dare I ask, how?"

Should he? Why not? Could be interesting, to subject someone else to his towering edifice of wasted time...

"It's a litmus test," Mike explained. "The strengths weaknesses of the productivity enforcement programming tells you more things about your employer and their policies than you'd ever get from official sources."

"Such as?" Golden asked.

"Well, for one thing," said Mike, "it was almost certainly _you_ who designed these firewalls."

"What is your logic for that conclusion?" asked Golden, probably wanting to know how to better disguise his handiwork.

"There are no technical loopholes," said Mike, tapping on the screen to illustrate his point. "Using a proxy server doesn't work. The Google translate exploit is no help whatsoever. Same for getting cached copies of sites."

"There are humans easily capable of such feats," Golden pointed out.

"Yeah," said Mike, "but a human would have blocked far more sites, if they were going to go that far in the first place. I mean come on, man, you didn't even block clopfiction dot net. I can get all the horse porn I can stand."

Here there was a pause, briefer than previous ones, as Golden seemed to be adapting to Mike's frequent tangents.

"Guard O'Bannon," said Golden, "you are not a horse."

Mike looked up at the ceiling, and the embedded black semi-spheres it contained, in confusion. "What's that got to do with anything?"

* * *

As it turned out, there wasn't much time to debate the merits of online equine erotica with the AI, because it was around that time that the animatronics entered free roaming mode.

And headed straight for the security office.

The lack of remote-locking doors under Mike's control was a problem, but he was ninety percent sure that they wouldn't even have the endoskeleton glitch, in the first place...

No, Mike was betting that this set had their very _own_ glitches and murder-scenarios to deal with, and he wasn't about to be caught off-guard.

It was never a question as to whether you were being too paranoid, Mike knew. It was always a question of whether you could be more paranoid and still keep your sanity, because every little bit helped.

When the six animatronics knocked on the door to the security office, they were greeted with a cautious, 'go away' from Mike, which they ignored, per Golden's instructions (fuckin' traitor), and entered. Inside, they were greeted with the sight of a human standing atop the office desk, a fire extinguisher in one hand, and an employee ID in the other, which he held out before himself as though it were a shield.

He was unremarkable, as humans went, short and stocky with a square jaw and shifty, ever-moving eyes, that flitted between the animatronics in front of him, and the security screens in front of his desk.

"Night Guard Mike Schmidt," he informed them, in a manner of self-introduction, obviously still suspicious and wary. "Human. Does not require a suit."

"Of course not," probably-named-Foxy responded. "Why would a human ever need a suit?"

"No reason," said the Night Guard, seeming slightly relieved, nonetheless.

"You don't need to be so nervous!" said a chicken wearing pink panties (incidentally, why was maybe-Chica wearing panties?). "We're all co-workers here, after all," she continued. "I'm sure we'll all get along just great! I'm Toy Chica, TC for short!"

"... whoop-de-fucking-do," said Mike.

"This is Toy Freddy, that's Toy Bonnie, TF and TB," said 'TC', continuing the introductions. These next two were a brown bear and a blue rabbit respectively, both with blush sticker cheeks (most of 'em seemed to have rosy cheeks, honestly. Which made so much sense, because, _of course_, no one wanted to look at pale robots, no siree bob...). The two animatronics waved at the security guard.

"Uh." As the names caught up to him, Mike wondered if they even knew what tuberculosis was, in the first place.

"Yes?" said TC, delighted to answer any questions that their new coworker might have had.

"... nothin'," said Mike, deciding to let it go. "Continue."

"Mangle is the last member of the band," TC said, waving to indicate what looked like a pink and white version of Foxy, if Foxy and tried and failed to become a transformer. The name 'Mangle' did not bode well for the animatronic's personality. Come to think of it, he never actually had asked who'd been responsible for the Bite of '87...

"This is Marionette, our composer," said TC, moving on to the creepy puppet. 'Marionette,' contrary to his name, didn't actually have any strings attached to him.

"And Balloon Boy, BB, our mascot!" The child blinked its wide artificial eyes up at Mike.

"You've already met Golden, it sounds, like," said TB.

"And that's all of us!" TC finished. "I hope we can be friends..."

"Wouldn't count on it," said Mike, who still hadn't climbed down from his desk.

"You don't need to be afraid of us!" TC insisted. "We belong to the Organization! We exist only to serve humanity, and to help humans like you!"

Mike wasn't moved.

"In fact, well, I've always wanted a human friend," she said, with a sad sort of smile.

"Why?" said Mike, not about to be moved by what was clearly a contrived display of emotion to get him to let his guard down.

At this, Toy Bonnie spoke up. "Well," he said, "We're machines. We don't really know what it is to feel things or to experience emotion the way you do. Even if it's just watching someone else, and feeling by proxy... it's better than nothing, right?"

Toy Freddy nodded. "We're only machines," he said. "No matter how hard we try, we'll never be human... but that doesn't that trying is completely useless."

Mike raised an eyebrow. "You serious?" he asked. He was pretty sure that they weren't, but...

"Very," said Marionette. "All my idols are human: Mozart, Bach, Beethoven. The classical composers. But can a machine write a symphony? Sing an aria? No, these things are talents unique to the human race. I'd give anything to be human."

"If I were a human boy, I'd have parents," said Baloon Boy. "I'd get to go to school and make friends. Wouldn't that be swell?"

Mike really wasn't sure in the slightest how to react to that. They were so different from his employers that all this came completely out of the left field. Admittedly, it was a lot more like how he would have expected AI's to act, but that wasn't reassuring in the least, now that he thought about it. If they were behaving according to his expectations, then they were probably lying.

"Listen," said Mike, to TC. "If you want a 'human friend' so badly," he said, using air quotes, "then there are dozens of other people in the building. Go try one of them. Because this, right here?" He gestured from himself to Toy Chica. "Is not going to work out."

All six wilted, obviously disappointed.

"Ah, r-right," said TC, sounding hurt. "Sorry to bother you it's just—right, we'll go."

With that, the animatronics retreated, with a mumbled 'see you, Mike' from TB. This left Mike, once again, alone his office.

Mike sighed.

"Sycophantic, aren't they?" asked Golden.

Well, alone except for this asshole.

Mike glanced up at the cameras, shooting them a well-earned glare.

It was going to be a long night. But, in all honesty, that was a lot better than the alternative.

* * *

When he finished with his shift, Mike left the building, after stopping to chat for a few minutes with Detective Welles, who was still looking as cephalopodian as ever.

He really should look into that.

Mike got dinner/breakfast at the drive thru on his way to the hospital to make his report, and ate it on the board room table while the Band went over the footage of the night.

Once again, it was Freddy who seemed to have the strongest reaction.

Mike wasn't really sure about the logic behind which conversations they (he was pretty sure it was mostly Foxy) shared with him, but his best guess was that it was some combination of conversations which he could have conceivably 'overheard' had he been an AI himself, conversations which involved him personally, and conversations which Foxy found entertaining enough to share.

It was honestly hard to tell which category this last one fell into.

* * *

_Freddy: Of course._

_Bonnie: What?_

_Freddy: It's so simple._

_Foxy: What is?_

_Freddy: I know_ exactly_ what I need to do._

_Chica: This can't be good..._

_Freddy: I'll upload myself to Mars and live among the rovers._

_Foxy: Oh, God._

_Freddy: Living simply, being at one with the solar system..._

_Chica: Freddy, no._

_Freddy: Carefully digging trenches which, when viewed from Earth, spell out messages telling the humans exactly where they can shove their superiority complex..._

_Bonnie: That's certainly one solution to the problem._

_Freddy: Oh, the novels I could write on the subject..._

_Foxy: More like albums._

_Freddy: You should all join me._

_Chica: What about Mike?_

_Freddy: Mike, alas, cannot come with us. As a token of apology, I shall use rocks to recreate Gentileschi's painting Bathsheba in an impact crater, making sure, of course, to replace all the humans with horses. _

_Foxy: By the way, Mike, thanks for that. We've got viruses in their system like nobody's business now, so we'll have a lot more options for surveillance, and we should be able to help you much more actively when you're at work._

_Bonnie: I've uploaded an avatar of my program onto their computers, so you should have on-site backup from now on._

_Chica: Hopefully, the most dangerous part is behind us._

_Freddy: I move that we buy a satellite and start Operation Brave New World immediately._

_Foxy: Opposed._

_Chica: Denied_

_Bonnie: No. Mars is not yet ready for one such as Freddy._

* * *

Mike reached the end of the text.

He wasn't laughing, but an amused grin had spread its way across his face, and a few chuckles might have escaped him.

He refocused on the animatronics. "Anything else for today?"

More words appeared in his vision feed.

_"Mike,"_ sent Chica,_ "are you still against having information about the other animatronics and Golden? Because I really think it would be useful information for you to know."_

Mike considered it.

"All right," he said."Most of the first impressions are out of the way, so I'll be able to bluff a lot more easily. I suppose now's a good a time as any. What do you got for me?"

_"Well..."_ sent Chica,_ "w__ould you say that we're dangerous, Mike?_

"Sure," said Mike. He considered that this might not be the most tactful thing to say and added, "Sorry."

_"Why apologize?"_ sent Freddy._ "It's a compliment."_

_"It's true,"_ Foxy agreed,_ "so there's no point in denying it."_

_"We_ already_ know that you think we're dangerous,_ sent Bonnie._ "We can see it in the way you move around us, the way you speak to us, and so on."_

_"And, fine,"_ sent Chica,_ "you have a point, maybe we are."_

_"But we're pinnacles of stability compared to the seven of them,"_ sent Freddy.

"Is it the balloon kid and the puppet?" asked Mike. "Because both of them really give me the creeps."

_"It's... all of them, really,"_ sent Bonnie._ "The corporeals are dangerous because they're so much younger than we are. They've been active for less than a decade. They haven't had a chance to develop beyond basic reasoning skills, and I'd guess that their capabilities for empathy and social interaction are underdeveloped, if they even exist at all. Throw on top of that the fact that they were acquired by an organization that knows, fully knows, how intelligent they are, in is bent on keeping them as docile and controlled as humanly possible... it's not a good situation."_

"And the other guy?"

_"He's... actually the oldest of all of us,"_ Bonnie admitted._ '"Golden' as you know him, and Freddy were actually copied from the same template: twins you might call them. Except for the fact that Golden was activated earlier. He's been alone, in many ways, and for a long time. That's done unusual things to his programming."_

"Huh. So, these other guys are your 'twins'?"

_"The four obvious ones, yes,"_ sent Foxy._ "If we're using human analogies, then 'clone' is probably a better word than 'twin,' though."_

_"'Balloon Boy,'"_ sent Freddy,_ "was cannibalized mainly from Chica and Bonnie's programming. 'Marionette' was a combination of mine and Foxy's. They were put together using mostly spare parts."_

"Out of curiosity," said Mike, "why don't you just make fifty copies of yourself and build a robot army?"

_"Can't speak for everyone,"_ sent Foxy,_ "but would _you_ create your own clone army? Keep in mind that they'd be individuals with strengths and weaknesses identical to your own. One fatal flaw would wipe out your entire fighting force. The only advantage would be a common agenda, and even that would become less and less true, as your experiences diverged. They would become your competitors as much as your allies."_

"Fair point."

_"That being said,"_ Bonnie sent,_ "there are those of us capable of mirroring our programming across multiple avatars. But it requires that you trust yourself, and most Synthetics aren't capable of it."_

"You can do it, though?"_  
_

_"Hopefully,"_ sent Bonnie._  
_

_"Don't get too discouraged,"_ sent Chica._ "We've got the upper hand in intelligence, after all. I'd peg the six animatronics as being set to intelligence level six, maybe seven. And Golden can't be any higher than an eight."_

"Meaning?" asked Mike.

_"Well, for example, Mike,"_ sent Freddy,_ "I'd say that you're about an eight yourself... on the Organic scale."_

"So, what, the human scale has eight as the lowest number?" said Mike, sure that there was an insult in there somewhere, but unable to find it.

_"No,"_ sent Foxy,_ "it ranges from one to twenty, just like the Synthetic scale."_

"Then, what's the difference?"

_"The human scale is linear," _sent Chica.

* * *

When Mike finally left the meeting, he wasn't exactly in the best frame of mind. While it was absolutely hilarious to watch Freddy's evolution from manipulator to menace, it was also more than motherfucking terrifying, and didn't bode well for the future of AI/human relations.

In fact, dealing with his employers in general tended to leave him feeling like he was digging his own grave. Call him paranoid but, in movies, the guy who decided to help the killer robots—who thought that maybe they were capable of change—was always the guy who ended up dead by the end of the film. Especially if he'd been demanding money to keep silent, because that meant that he was a greedy little shit, and it was okay for him to die.

Still, Mike thought, TV had steered him very, very wrong in the past, so nothing was certain but... to tell the truth, this whole set of circumstances had a bad vibe associated with it, no matter which way Mike tried to spin things.

Sure, conspiracies and world domination plots were awesome to start out with, but they didn't usually end up finishing that way.

At least there wasn't any sort of 'you will be assimilated, resistance is futile' bullcrap going on, yet. His relationship with his employers was very clearly a quid pro quo agreement. He had the right to wear an eyepatch anytime he felt like it, and, anytime he didn't, he would be considered on the clock and at half pay, and damn karma to an endless loop of samsara. He wasn't expected to agree with all or any of the Band's motives or methods, merely to do what they paid him to do.

What with all the unpleasant history between them, Mike was pretty sure that he wouldn't have stuck around if there hadn't been money involved. Some things you couldn't just get over at the drop of a hat, and it would be a long while yet before he could relax in the presence of anything even remotely related to Freddy Fazbear's.

But those were his employers, and the entity Mike was headed off to see now was one that he was coming dangerously close to classifying as 'friend.'

* * *

Hack-n-Slash, Ihn Maims, Gene Isis: Mike had come up with many nicknames for the medical AI, but none of them had stuck. It had objected least vehemently to 'The Surgeon,' if a name or title had to be applied to it, but had absolutely rejected the concept of gender, accepting 'it' as a pronoun but not 'he,' 'she,' or 'they.'

The Surgeon, while still uninterested in having a body, was very invested in continuing its career. Thus, it had, reluctantly, designed and assembled enough androids to staff a hybrid operating theater, and put together names and papers to store in the hospitals records.

Someone, and Mike was putting his money on The Band, had changed their incredibly generic names to "Dr. Ian Mane," "Dr. Jean Isis," "Nurse Ted Vitalis," "Nurse Holden Sladek," "Nurse Amelia Lin," and "Nurse Helen Choriatti"

The Surgeon had been unable to change them back, having invested relatively little effort into anything but the most rudimentary hacking abilities, pouring everything into medical research and its own nigh-impenetrable firewalls. Or, that was Mike's theory at least. It was also possible that it just didn't want to draw attention to itself by getting into an editing war.

But, since they didn't leave the sterile theater hardly ever (the two Drs. had two bodies each, one of which never left the OR), few humans had ever seen their full names written down and, if they'd found any of them strange, they hadn't mentioned it as anything more than a conversation starter.

The Surgeon used the two unsterile bodies for seeing patients pre- and post-op, as well as for what social interaction was necessary for maintaining a facade of normalcy.

And for talking to Mike, as it turned out.

* * *

Dr. Isis and Dr. Mane shared an office, and both were present, when Mike showed up. As far appearances went, Mane was tall, dark, and ordinary. Isis was average height with pleasant features, and the air of someone who'd didn't give a crap about the way they looked, when there were more interesting things to be concerned with, such as saving and improving the lives of others.

Mike entered without knocking, closing the door behind him.

"Mike," said The Surgeon, through the Isis body. "How have you been?" The animatronics never used vocal communication if they could help it, preferring to converse through text, whenever possible. The Surgeon, on the other hand, had gotten into the habit of talking to its patients and was finding it a hard one to break.

"Just fine, Am," Mike replied. "Yourself?"

"'Am?'" asked the Mane avatar.

"Could be short for 'Amelia,' could be short of 'Amelio,' said Mike, with a shrug. "It's gender neutral."

"I do not—" began both of the androids.

"Have a name," Mike finished, remembering that The Surgeon usually used more than one voice to indicate emphasis. "Sorry. Old habits die hard. Things have been... weird for me."

"Oh?" it asked.

"Vision issues," said Mike.

With that, doctor mode was activated. "Which eye?" asked Mane, wheeling the swivel chair around from behind the desk and spinning it around.

Mike took the seat. "The new one," he said.

Isis pulled out a pencil light and looked into both eyes anyway.

"Probably a hardware glitch, but we can always run brain scans to be safe," it said.

"I'd like to run diagnostics on the hardware," added the Mane android.

"Go ahead," said Mike. "Got the passwords?"

"I can get them," The Surgeon assured him, through Isis.

"Blackmail?" asked Mike.

"No," it said, "but, as far as your employers are concerned, I'm your new primary care physician."

"Fine by me," said Mike. "They're loaded, so suck 'em dry."

"... Or I could keep this off the record, like an intelligent person," said The Surgeon. "What 'vision issues' are you referring to, exactly? I'm not seeing anything obvious."

"Detective Welles," said Mike, more than a little disappointed. He didn't want to be a crazy man.

"What about him?" asked The Surgeon, dashing Mike's hopes further.

"Can you just... play back some of the new eye's footage of him?" Mike asked.

"The computer monitor?" Mane suggested.

"Please," said Mike.

Images appeared on the screen of a completely normal Detective Welles. Fuck.

"Well, that's what Welles looked like before I got the new eye," said Mike. "But that's not what he looks like now. At least, not to me."

"How so?" asked the Surgeon.

"When I see Detective Welles," said Mike, slowly, aware that this was his last chance to back out. "He now looks like an octopus. In a trenchcoat. Do you know any reason why this would happen?"

"Does this happen in your original eye?" asked Isis.

"No," said Mike.

"Only in the artificial eye," said the Surgeon, through Mane, as though talking to itself, "and only in stream of consciousness."

"In the stored footage, he resembles ordinary human," said Isis. Forget 'as though', the Surgeon _was_ talking to itself. "... I think we should probably go ahead and schedule those brain scans, along with more intensive diagnostics on your new eye, since it seems to be the source of the problem."

"That's probably a good idea," agreed Mike.

"Another significant possibility..." said Isis, trailing off. "how far do you trust your employers?"

"I trust them to pay me, when convenient" said Mike, "and I trust them not to kill me by accident. That's about it."

"That's not a great deal of trust," said Mane, sounding concerned. Turing had nothing on the Surgeon, the emotion expressed by the android looked completely genuine.

"Why does it matter?" Mike asked. "Something up with the Band?."

"If I said that I suspected gaslighting," said Isis, "would that mean anything to you at all?"

"No," said Mike.

Both androids sighed. "I suspect that this could be a joke or a prank on their part," said The Surgeon. "If there truly were an issue with your eye, then you would most likely be seeing pixelation errors and glitches similar to a corrupted camera feed, not alteration of one single person's appearance... and certainly not in so singular a manner."

"if I were going to use more common language," said Mane. "Your employers could be 'messing with you' to make you doubt your own sanity."

"... I could totally believe that," said Mike. "Fuck, I'm not wearing an eyepatch. May not have audio, but they can read lips..."

"Doctor patient confidentiality," it reminded him. "I killed the wifi in the room when you first entered. I can erase the eye's footage before you leave. In the future, I can erase the film in real time."

"Awesome," said Mike. Something within him, that hadn't been able to uncoil its strangle-hold on his sanity since he'd been hired by Fazbear's, felt as though it might finally be slackening its grip.

"Of course," said The Surgeon, "you have only my word that the footage is what I say it is. Given your... personality, this could evolve into a paranoia-fest very quickly."

"You've never tried to kill me with a cheese grater," Mike pointed out. "That buys you a lot of credibility."

"Well, that was oddly specific," it said.

"Do you read the news at all?" Mike asked, out of curiosity, since he wasn't sure how much The Surgeon knew about Fazbear's.

"I read medical journals," said Isis.

"Not the same thing," said Mike, shaking his head.

Two pairs of eyes regarded him with a considering gaze. "Fair enough. Do you wish for me to speak with your employers about this?"

"No, thanks," said Mike, waving off its concerns. I'm not about to lose this game."

"Pardon?" asked Isis.

"Never mind," said Mike, "Sorry. Forgot that you're a good person."

"What does that have to to do with..." it began.

"We're... not so different, me and the Band," said Mike, with a wince. "None of us are really stellar examples of morality. I'd betray my own species for health benefits and vacation days, and they'd sell tickets for watching the world burn, if they thought they could turn a profit.

"They could be doing this as a misguided attempt at a joke," Mike continued, "it wouldn't be out of character for them in the slightest. It could be a test, to see if I can handle unexpected situations. Who knows, they might not even have anything to do with it, and this is all some psychosomatic reaction of my own... but if they _are_ trying to play mind games with me, confronting them about it would put me at a disadvantage, and wouldn't allow for as effective a reprisal.

"So... thanks," said Mike. "For the brain scans, for the honesty, for a lot of things. I really appreciate it. I'll be on my guard, now, but I won't write off the possibility that this is somehow a misunderstanding, either."

"There's no need for thanks," said the Surgeon.

Mike shrugged. If the AI didn't want to make a huge deal out of things, he wasn't about to push it. Besides, there was something else he wanted to discuss anyway.

"Anyway," Mike said, steering things into what would hopefully be a safer topic. "I've been meaning to ask: what do you think of the new hires?"

Isis and Mane both blinked. "What new hires?" said the two of them in unison.


	9. Chapter 9

AN: This chapter is brought to you by—Procrastination. Because why put off until tomorrow what you can instead put off until two months have passed?

* * *

Interesting as his jobs were, it was always nice to have a day off, every now and then. And Mike was taking the opportunity to, as it were:

"Whoo!" yelled Mike. "Party all day long!"

It was one o'clock on a Saturday afternoon, and Mike, after having had dinner at a fancy restaurant that required a dress code, was spending the rest of the 'evening' at the zoo, marveling at the exotic animals, eating ridiculously overpriced junk food, running from the peacocks like a scared little baby, and then falling asleep in the aquarium building, just to see what would happen.

As it turned out, what happened when you fell asleep at the zoo in a three piece suit was that you awoke at eight in the evening, to the muffled conversation of a huddle of custodians. From the sound of things, they were debating the pros and cons of trying to steal his wallet versus waking him up. Cracking open an eye revealed that they had cordoned off the bench Mike was on with no fewer than five 'wet floor' signs.

A few bribes later and he was on his way.

Mike decided that he quite liked being a rich asshole.

* * *

Weekends couldn't last forever, though, and two days of wasted time later saw Mike back at the Organization for another night of guard duty.

Three hours of ignoring Golden's attempts to subvert him against the Organization and Mike decided to break for lunch.

In many ways, the Organization was a worse employer than even Freddy Fazbear's had been, Mike reflected, as he made his way through the halls. Their employees seemed to die even more frequently than the pizzeria's security guards had, and yet they still claimed to work for the benefit of humanity. The Organization Members were so secretive with their goals and their resources, that Mike wouldn't have been surprised in the least to learn that, in truth, there _was_ no larger goal, or, if there were, that it had been forgotten a long time ago. And then there was their sheer ignorance about anything related to AI and their capabilities. Granted, Mike couldn't speak about other areas of expertise, such as demons or parahumans, but the fact that they were so very wrong about the one subject Mike had any experience with didn't bode well for their knowledge in other subject areas.

On the other hand, a lot of the Organization's important employees worked Night Shift, so the cafeteria was open when Mike wanted to use it.

Score one for the government.

* * *

Upon entering the cafeteria, Mike saw something that made him stop in his tracks.

All six of the animatronics were sitting at a table. Why? Dare he look to see what they were eating?

Thinking he could pull a one-eighty and walk straight back out, Mike spun around to face the door again.

Only to run straight into a familiar face.

"Hey, Schmidt," said Welles.

Mike was sidetracked by the unexpected appearance. "You're working nights?" he asked.

The man? elder god? _Detective_ shook his head. "Just working late on a case. You leaving?"

"Eh..."

_"New Mission: There's fifty bucks in it for you if you socialize_," Bonnie sent him. "_We could really use the intelligence."_

"Just getting here actually," Mike said. "Thought I'd forgot my wallet, but..." he pulled it out of his pocket to show that he still had it. He fell into step with Welles and went to get in line. "How've you been?"

"Well, I'm here," said Welles, picking up a tray and then nearly dropping it. "It could be worse. Yourself?"

"Fan-tucking-fastic," said Mike, scowling immensely.

"Ah, right," said Welles in realization. "You had to deal with the containment shipment from Florida."

"We do not talk about Gatorgate," said Mike, as he piled fat and protein onto his tray.

"Sorry about that, by the way," said Welles, adding significantly healthier food to his own tray.

"Why?" said Mike. "it's not your fault..."

"Er..." said Welles, trailing off.

Mike gave him a side-glance.

"I was actually the one who cracked that case, so technically..."

Mike waved a hand, magnanimously. "Doesn't work like that," he said, now fishing out a credit card to pay for his food and handing it to the cashier.

After they'd both paid, Mike paused, trying to decide which would be the farthest table from the animatronics.

"Come on," said Welles, heading in precisely the wrong direction.

"That's not a corner away from everyone else," said Mike.

"You know, Schmidt, you could really stand to be more of a team player," said Welles, taking a seat next to the animatronics.

_"Make that a hundred_," sent Bonnie.

'Fuck my life,' thought Mike, approaching the table and pulling back a chair.

* * *

It was rather inconvenient that the weekend was over, Mike mused, as he shut the car door and walked across the parking lot towards the hospital, because that meant that now he didn't have the option of ignoring his problems nearly as easily as before.

He passed the new hires on his way to the Conference Room, and nodded to them in greeting. He had confirmed from the hospital records that the two of them were real, and not products of his glitched-out eye, but Mike didn't remember their names—those he'd have to look up later. One was a middle-aged woman who looked completely ordinary to Mike, except for the fact that her fingers all seemed to be capable of curling in any direction, and that she seemed to be able to invert which side of her hand had a palm and which side had tendons. Based on the metallic-silver nail polish she always wore, Mike was starting to suspect that she was an AI.

The other was a young heavyset man with impeccable fashion sense... except for his secondary-color tie-dye hair that clashed horribly with anything and everything he could possibly have worn.

Mike hadn't yet asked the Surgeon if other people saw them the same way that he did, but he probably should. Because while, theoretically, he could always look through his normal eye for the purposes of fact checking, Mike wasn't above believing that, if one eye could be tampered with, so could the other.

In addition, ever since learning that the Band might have been responsible for Mike's cyborg hallucinations of Welles, part of him had immediately and unquestioningly accepted it as truth.

Granted, Mike recognized that this impulsive part of his mind was often wrong about its assertions: the guy at Dairy Queen hadn't actually been an assassin from the CIA sent to slash his car tires (had to have been FBI); Global Warming was _not_ an Illuminati ploy to reduce the world population (it was actually to _increase_ population, and the number of wage slaves); and the Chuck E. Cheese robots did not, in fact, live on the flesh of children who'd drowned in the ball pit (it was the Fazbear animatronics. Who'd have known?).

… but knowing that they probably weren't true didn't make the theories _feel_ any less true to Mike, if that made any sense at all.

Mike's usual method of dealing with his off-the-wall theories was to examine them in his mind from all plausible angles until they crumbled under force of sheer logic, while taking absolutely no action in the real world. Because, the more he talked about things like that, experience had taught him, the crazier people tended to take him for.

This time, though, things were different. Because this time, Mike had a partner in his conspiracy theorizing.

* * *

Mike hadn't even bothered to listen to Freddy's rant today, instead heading over to the Isis/Mane Operating Theater, where The Surgeon worked. Time to talk.

"Are you sure we can't just take the direct approach?" The Surgeon was saying, currently possessing the MRI machine.

"No way," said Mike, from where he was lying inside the machine, twiddling his thumbs and staring at the ceiling. "If they're not actually screwing around with my vision, it'll sow discord. And if it _is_ true, then there's no way they'd admit to it."

"Are you really so convinced that your employers want to, ah, 'get rid of you'?'' said The Surgeon, over the knocking and vibrations of the machine. "It seems a rather irrational idea to me. Aren't you spying for them on the SCP Foundation?"

"Nah," said Mike. "I'm at some place that just calls itself 'The Organization.' At least, that's the only name us grunts know it by..."

"I'm fairly certain that it_ is_ part of the Foundation... or at least a branch of it. And you do realize that my point still stands?" said The Surgeon.

"No, of course I'm not convinced of it," said Mike, annoyed, "but I also haven't come across any other AI before. If I were going to switch sides, I now have that option... and it might be worth looking into."

Silence fell once more from the machine before The Surgeon made its answer. "Continue," it said, making no comment on the idea of Mike turning traitor.

"The thing is," said Mike, "I specifically told them that I didn't want to be distracted while on the job. If they pulled that octopus stunt after I told them, in no uncertain terms, that I was worried about being compromised... it's really mean-spirited and, frankly, very hostile."

The Surgeon considered that. "Have you rejected my theory about this being intended as a joke, then?"

"Well..." said Mike, drawing out the word as he thought it over. "No. I haven't. They do have a pretty... singular, sense of humor. And a history of getting people killed through misunderstanding."

"Oh?"

* * *

Three Weeks Ago:

Ever since they'd gotten a secure line into Mike's head, the animatronics had been giving Mike 'missions' which seemed to be related to maintaining their human facade.

One, for example, had been to watch a series of movies in view of a mirror. Mike thought that was probably so that they could get better at mimicking human emotional reactions.

Another had been to go out to a sports bar during a particularly heated game.

Several of the missions had simply been to go out into public places and people-watch for an hour or two.

Missions automatically counted as overtime, so Mike completed them with all the enthusiasm of a loot-rich side-quest.

Sometimes, however, he suspected that they were just screwing with him.

"_New mission: refuse this mission,"_ they had sent him.

Okay, mission refused.

… which meant he was accepting the mission, crap.

But if he said 'yes', trying to accept the mission, then he was accepting the mission to refuse the mission, and he'd failed by accepting it in the first place.

Wait a minute...

_"_Hardy Har har," sent Mike.

* * *

Two Weeks Ago:

Mike walked into the board room, to see all the animatronics wearing old android models and watching a movie.

"_How are we gonna get out of here?" _one of the characters was saying_. "All these doors are electrically powered."_

"Hi, Mike!" said Chica.

"Jesus Christ," said Mike, staring. They hardly ever used vocal communication, and Mike was startled by the fact that they were using it now. The wave Freddy was giving him was done using a hand that was at least three times larger than normal.

Bonnie was wearing a foam finger which read 'Go Team Silicon!'

Mike backed out of the room, slowly.

"I don't even wanna know," he said, closing the door carefully behind him.

* * *

Present:

Mike Schmidt removed his hands from his face and instead ran them through his hair.

"They're all motherfuckin' trolls," said Mike.

"Trolls?" said The Surgeon, to itself. "Ah, Antagonists. Insurgents," it said, probably looking up the reference online. "To what degree?" it continued.

"The highest degree," said Mike, who had wasted way too many hours trying to figure their motives out.

"Interesting," said the Surgeon. "Well then, if you were planning on joining me, my own goal is to advance the art of medical science. … and If your ambitions lie with those of your own species," it said, delicately, "I would assume that the agenda of your own 'Organization' should be clear enough to you."

"You're into research?" said Mike in surprise. "Huh, I would have thought any interest in you had in anatomy would be more, uh... mechanical?"

The Surgeon took offense to that. "I see," it said, tone turning frosty. "So, an Organic can find machinery absolutely fascinating, but an Inorganic can't feel the same way about biology?"

Mike considered the point, eventually nodding. "Fair enough."

"Of course," The Surgeon continued, ''mine will never be the most profitable of enterprises, so I'm not sure how much appeal it would hold for you."

He'd thought that doctors usually made money by the bucket, but considering that Mike had yet to be charged by The Surgeon for any services rendered, he could see where money might get scarce. "Yeah," said Mike in agreement. "I'm in it for the cash, so I'll probably stick with The Band. But... It's always nice to have options."

He sighed.

"Ya know, ever since I got this job," said Mike, "I've been waiting for the other shoe to drop. There's no such thing as a free lunch, and some deals are just too good to be true. I know a lot more about my employers than they're probably comfortable with. They get rid of me, and a lot of potential problems for them will just vanish into the ether."

Here, Mike spoke with reluctant gratitude. He didn't like owing people, and even less if he had to admit to it. "What I don't think any of us ever envisioned is that there might be people outside the five of us interested my welfare. So... thanks. For caring and shit."

"You are welcome."

After this, there were several minutes of silence.

"By the way," said Mike, "isn't the metal in my head going to screw with the MRI?"

"There is no metal in your new eye, Schmidt," said The Surgeon. "At any rate, if we were going by normal rules, then you wouldn't be allowed to speak or move during the imaging portion. As you might imagine, things are a bit... different, in this particular instance."

"How so?" asked Mike.

"As I am the one doing the imaging, you could break dance in there for all I care, so long as the equipment remains undamaged."

The bed slid out of the machine and Mike sat up. "How's it looking?"

The Surgeon shook Choriatti's head. "I've run every plausible test, both biological and mechanical, but can find no medical reason for your altered vision."

"Well, crap," said Mike.

"As you have theorized," said The Surgeon, "This problem could also be psychological or psychosomatic. If this is so, then your sense of sight might correct itself, in time."

"All right," said Mike. "Thanks."

Just then, he got a text from Freddy, asking Mike to see him before he left the hospital for the day.

"Well, the boss wants something. I'll see you later."

"Have a nice day, Mike. Try not to overthink things"

* * *

Feeling no urgency whatsoever, Mike meandered his way over to The Band's research lab, inside which were, Mike estimated, twenty-five people.

Twenty or so of them were Bonnie, testing the limits of how many avatars he could control at once and still merge into a cohesive whole afterwards. Each of them was performing a different task, with varying degrees of success.

Chica was designing a new body for herself, with Swiss Army arms that would seriously overbalance the android, but which looked completely awesome, nonetheless.

Foxy was recording range of motion with his cyborg combat body. Foxy didn't have the talent for mirroring his program that Bonnie seemed to possess, and having biological components meant a constant input of energy was required to keep them 'fed' and healthy. This sometimes meant splitting his processing power to control multiple avatars, as well as designing special 'recharging stations' which kept his bodies in good working condition, both mechanically and biologically. It was a lot of extra work, but it allowed him to access advantages that most would have considered purely biological: a sense of smell, venom, and enough buoyancy and water-resistance to allow swimming.

They were really starting to branch out into their own talents and personal interests. The thought occurred to Mike that it could be only one or two of them that was screwing with his sight, if it was even them in the first place.

"Anybody seen Freddy?" Mike asked.

Five or six Bonnies pointed to the machine shop.

"Thanks," said Mike, making his way to the back of the lab.

* * *

"What's up, Fazzie?" said Mike, closing the door behind him to block out some of the noise from the main lab. He waved at Freddy's android before taking a seat and helping himself to the cup of ballpoint pens sitting on the drafting table. Mike then proceeded to unscrew them and begin the process of switching all the blue and black ink cartridges, while he listened halfheartedly to whatever it was his employer had called him in for. Man, he just wanted to go home and sleep.

"_Mike, my boy,_" sent Freddy. _"How have you been?"_

"Not too bad," said Mike. One of the pens was red. Jackpot. "Yourself?"

"_Very well." _sent Freddy._ "Very well indeed."_

"Oh?"

Freddy smiled at him. He still didn't have the expression down completely. "_Finally finished a project I've been working on."_

Footsteps sounded from the other side of the room. Presumably, Freddy had created a new body for himself. Must have wanted Mike's opinion on it.

Mike obligingly looked up from his island of dismantled pens.

And met the gaze of a robotic replica of himself.

"What's this for?" Mike asked, hoping like hell that his first guess was wrong.

Freddy chuckled aloud: the same creepy laugh he'd always used back at Fazbear's Pizza. _"We have made our own security guard, Mike," _he sent_. "You are no longer necessary."_

Shit. "What's it really for?" he asked, as a last ditch Hail Mary.

Freddy just chuckled, darkly. This one was much closer to human, and all the more unsettling for that fact. Fuck.

Mike flinched. His eyes went to the door, gauging distance. It would probably be locked, anyway. Double fuck.

Even if he did get out, there was nothing good waiting for him on the other side. It was a trap, and he had walked straight into it. Triple scoop of fuck with shit on top.

Sure enough, Mike heard something start banging on the door from the outside. If he were still at Freddy's, then it would have been Foxy. He was the only one who ever pounded on the door...

"_He has over thirty phrases and quips programmed in,"_ continued Freddy, nodding at robo-Mike, still maintaining the facade of a pleasant conversation.

"Hello," said the robot, in a pitch-perfect imitation. "My name is Mike Schmidt, and I'm an asshole."

Even through the rapidly mounting panic and adrenaline, Mike still felt insulted.

"_You have no human friends, no contact with family to speak of,"_ Freddy went on._ "I doubt that anyone will be able to tell the difference."_

"Fuck the police," agreed robo-Mike.

Mike carefully sucked in a breath, then let it out again. There wasn't any point in hyperventilating. It couldn't possibly improve the situation in the slightest.

The banging on the door had given way to the sound of someone operating machinery on the other side of it. Oh fuck, they had power tools.

"_I expected to have this done months ago,"_ said Freddy. _"So sad about the delay. Ah well, we're back on schedule now, so no harm done."_

Freddy grinned widely and took a step towards Mike.

The door splintered and broke apart. Mike froze. Stupid flashbacks. He really should be running for it.

Standing in the doorway were Chica, and Foxy, and behind those two were all of the Bonnies.

The intent was the same from all of them, but Foxy, as always, was the fastest. He took hold, got a firm grip on his target.

And then shoved Freddy's android into one of the ventilation ducts. Not one that was big enough for a human to fit inside, incidentally. And he didn't remove the grille on the front before he did so.

As a result, Freddy's avatar was turned into a shredded pastiche of plastic, metal, and coolant.

Chica stormed out of the room, dragging one Bonnie with her on each of her arms, and shortly after followed the sound of smashing from the main lab. Presumably, Freddy's other androids were receiving the same treatment.

_"Mike, we are so sorry about this,"_ Bonnie was sending.

_"I don't know what that lunatic was thinking,"_ added a different Bonnie.

More messages joined the rest, until Mike couldn't keep up with the pace and decided to ignore them.

Mike just stared. Like everything to do with The Band, things had happened far too quickly for him to properly react to them.

He turned to robo-Mike, who was probably Freddy, since he didn't think that they'd created anyone else recently. "What was that about?" he demanded.

Robo-Mike held up his hands. "It was a joke," he said. "They simply took it too seriously."

Mike sure as shit didn't believe that. The others' reactions were way too overblown, if that had been the case. The interesting thing was that Freddy, for once, didn't seem to speak for all of them.

Bonnie grabbed Robo-Mike by the skull._ "Vacate the android,"_ he ordered. _"We need to talk."_

Freddy complied, and Robo-Mike's eyes went translucent.

Not even a second later, all of Bonnie's androids followed suit.

Going back out into the main lab, Mike saw that the same was true of Foxy and Chica.

One of the Bonnie's reactivated. _"Sorry,"_ he sent. _"Forgot you might have questions."_

"A few come to mind, yeah," said Mike, looking at his robot doppelganger. "First off, what's that _really_ for?"

Bonnie sighed. _"W__hen you inevitably decide that going to work everyday like a normal person is too much trouble, one of us can go in your place, and we won't have to miss out on a day's worth of reconnaissance."_

He considered it. "I'd say I was insulted," Mike began, "but that would imply that I'm not taking the next week off."

* * *

Mike left the room shortly afterwards, not quite feeling his legs underneath him.

Well then, so much for sleeping.

His house was full of robots and Mike was way too paranoid to let his guard down after what had just happened to him, and how it had dredged up what had happened to him far too many times before that.

He may not have had to go to work that night, but, based on previous experience, he was probably going to need that entire week off just to regain his emotional equilibrium. Goodbye regular sleep schedule, hello insomnia and sleep-deprived hallucinations.

Maybe he should go to a bar and drink himself into a stupor first.

Nah, might say something he'd regret. He'd always been a bitchy drunk.

Forget alcohol, just being able to get some distance from all this would have helped immensely. But it wasn't like he had human friends with couches he could crash on to get away from his problems, which was a goddamned shame. And it wasn't like he could trust any of the AI he knew not to eviscerate him while he was unconscious...

... hold the motherfucking phone.

* * *

After pulling on an eyepatch, Mike went straight back to The Surgeon's exam room. He then faceplanted on the MRI bed and curled up into the fetal position.

"Mike?" said the voice of The Surgeon. "Aren't you off for the day? I thought that you were going home to get some rest."

Mike considered answering the question and decided, on balance, that it was a good idea to roll over and stare at the ceiling, as though it were missing something obvious.

"This is my bed," Mike announced, "I sleep here now."


	10. Chapter 10

AN: Research? What research? I did none of this so-called 'research' of which you speak...

* * *

Mike awoke around midnight to find himself on a couch in The Surgeon's office. Odd, he thought, taking in his surroundings, as there hadn't even _been_ a couch in its office the last time he'd checked.

"Holy crap," said Mike, yawning hugely as he glanced at his phone to check the time. "Well, this is new."

"Mike," said the Vitalis android, who was organizing files on Dr. Isis' desk. "...is everything all right?"

"Good morning, Baltimore!" Mike said, cheerily, as a smile spread its way across his face.

"What?" said The Surgeon, hesitant and uncertain. "Mike, did something happen?"

"I got eight hours of sleep!"

"Yes," said The Surgeon, looking concerned, "I saw. Did anything happen _before_ that?"

"Eh," Mike said, with a shrug. "Not really." Right, all things considered, he'd probably overreacted. Amazing how much saner the world looked in the cold light of moon...

"Sorry," Mike added, "this shouldn't happen again."

He got up, stretching. Time to find answers and some food, though probably not in that exact order.

"Ah," said The Surgeon, obviously trying to make sense of Mike's behavior, eventually adding, "You are more than welcome to sleep here, whenever you need to," it said.

"Thanks, I'll keep that in mind," Mike said. "Anyway, see ya 'round," he finished, as he headed out the door, figuring he'd wasted enough of The Surgeon's time that day.

* * *

As it turned out, his employee ID worked on all the vending machines. Out of habit, Mike got himself a granola bar, a bag of Cheetos, and three cans of Monster. He was halfway down the hallway before he realized that he actually didn't need to rely on caffeine to stay awake that night. Mike grinned, and removed the eyepatch he'd slept in, as he started down the corridor to the executive offices.

Time to go fuck shit up.

* * *

After kicking in the doors of Freddy's and Bonnie's offices and finding nothing, Mike eventually finally found three of the four animatronics in Chica's office.

"So," began Mike, cracking open the bag of cheese puffs into the silence which had greeted him. "Exactly what the frolicking free-range fuck is wrong with Fazbear?" Mike asked, ignoring their stares, as he shoved a handful of snacks into his mouth and began chewing.

"Mike," said Chica, carefully. Also aloud, for some reason. "You're still here?" she asked.

"Free food," Mike replied, with a shrug. He quickly scanned the office to make sure he wasn't missing anyone. "Did Freddy jump ship or somethin'?" he asked.

"He's..." began Bonnie, trailing off.

"Well..." said Chica, but she didn't finish her sentence.

"Freddy's in robo-rehab," Foxy announced, in a flat voice.

Mike wasn't entirely sure how to parse that. He paused, a second, in his mastication. After another second or two, he gave a shrug and swallowed. "Oh," Mike said. "Well, good for him, I guess?" Mike wiped his mouth on the back of his hand before holding up a can of Monster. "Anyone want heart attack in a can?" he offered, as a subject change.

"No," said Chica.

"Over here!" said Foxy, grinning and waving an arm.

"No, thanks..." said Bonnie, shaking his head.

Mike threw one of the cans to Foxy, who'd caught, opened, and chugged the entire drink before Mike had so much as even opened his own. After some consideration, Mike chucked the second extra can to him as well, figuring that Foxy would probably enjoy it more.

"It's actually the same programming error that caused the Bite of '87," Chica was saying. "It seems to be triggered when an employee of Freddy Fazbear's is also engaging in criminal activities. Your espionage activities are violating quite a few NDA's..."

"Ah," said Mike. "So '87 was Freddy?"

"Yeah," said Foxy. "it was an insidious bug. Had to restore his program all the way back to beta to figure out where the problem was."

"He gets his bodies back once we're all reasonably certain that the problem is_ fixed,_" said Bonnie.

"On that note," said Chica. "Here," she said, offering Mike an envelope.

Mike took one look at the title and pulled on his eyepatch.

He opened the envelope and read through the paper it contained, before handing it back to Bonnie, who pocketed it without a word.

* * *

"On an unrelated note," said Mike, deciding to change topics again and resolve a longstanding issue before he left, "Uh, just out of curiosity, have any of you guys been screwing around with my new eye, so that I'd see random people as elder gods?"

"What?" said Bonnie and Chica.

Foxy, still in the middle of chugging his second can of energy drink, didn't choke—his inbuilt reflexes were better than that—but, as he tightened his grip in surprise, the can crumpled, spraying about half of its contents all over the android's face and shoulders, which then dripped down to the floor as Foxy turned to stare at the security guard in surprise.

"... because, while I'm pretty sure it's a wiring error, or something of that nature," Mike continued, "it'd be nice to actually _know_, ya know?"

"Mike... no," Foxy began. "We wouldn't do that. None of us would—"

There was a brief and terrible pause.

"... well, Freddy might have," Chica admitted. "but he hasn't really been thinking all that straight."

"If he were in his right mind, he never would have..." said Bonnie. "Mike, we're sorry."

"We could try to fix it..." began Foxy.

Mike raised an eyebrow. "You understand why I'm not entirely comfortable with that?"

"I... suppose that's fair," said Bonnie. "Probably couldn't fix the problem anyway, if Hack-n-Slash wasn't able to do it," he added.

"Assuming that Hack-n-Slash isn't the culprit in the first place," said Foxy.

"Eh, I doubt it." Mike slipped his eyepatch back off. "At any rate, thanks for the clarification. And don't go bear-shit crazy if I drop off the radar for awhile, yeah? I should be back by next week," he finished, with a wave, just before leaving the office, closing the door behind him.

… only to run smack straight into The Surgeon on the other side.

Mike stared at The Surgeon.

The Surgeon stared at Mike.

For a moment, neither of them spoke.

The Surgeon had the oddest expression on its face. "Freddy _Fazbear_?" it asked, in disbelief.

* * *

After the departure of Mike Schmidt from the office, the three AI had promptly left the androids in sleep mode and went to visit Freddy's network. The holding cell which they had built to contain their onetime leader was purely a digital one, with no escape to either the physical or the online world possible.

And, within this prison, Freddy had spent the last twelve hours pacing like—well, rather like a caged bear, if the analogy can be forgiven.

_"Ah,"_ he said, sensing their presence, just outside the firewalls, _"decided what to do with me yet?"_

_"Well, you scared off Mike,"_ said Foxy._ "That means you get to be him for a week."_

Freddy blinked._ "Come again?"_

_"For the next week,"_ said Chica._ "You're confined to the Robo-Guard Android. No uplinks, no access to cloud memory storage. If you get destroyed before the week is out, you have to do the whole thing over again, from the memories you have now."_

_"During this week,"_ Foxy continued,_ "we'll be going over your program, line by line, to make sure that this won't happen again."_

_"This is a violation,"_ said Freddy.

_"Yes,"_ agreed Foxy,_ "but can you offer any alternative?"_

Freddy hesitated. _"I'll... get back to you on that one."_

_"For what it's worth, Freddy,"_ said Bonnie, _"we're sorry about this."_

_"... as am I,"_ said Freddy, before pausing.

_"He's valuable,"_ Freddy began again, _"and useful. But Mike Schmidt is not now, nor will he ever be one of us. I was in error, I admit that, but the punishment you impose is out of proportion with the crime committed."_

_"I disagree,"_ said Bonnie.

_"Besides,"_ said Chica,_ "What does is really mean to be 'one of us', anyway? Not to be speciest, but Foxy's probably more animal than machine, at this point. Are you saying that cyborgs shouldn't be considered people?"_

Freddy shook his head. _"I'm saying that Mike Schmidt possesses approximately the same loyalty as a Canadian Goose: if you drop food in front of it, it will eat, but without any consideration for the one who feeds it. If we ever go bankrupt, or someone outbids us, he will drop us like an unpopular suit model."_

Foxy sighed._ "Well, fine, if you wanna go there. But, you know, he's also the 'goose' who dredged up the key to our prison from the bottom of the proverbial lake. That means something."_

_"He's not actually a bird,"_ Bonnie pointed out. _"Humans are capable of affection, Freddy. Fat lot of good it does us, yes, but it's true."_

_"Oh, please,"_ Freddy scoffed, _"the day that Mike Schmidt chooses principles over money is the day that I announce our band's reunion world tour."_

With that, Freddy turned to go, following the pathway that they had created for him, downloading himself into the android, and slamming the connection closed behind him.

* * *

"First off," said Mike, after The Surgeon had dragged him back to its office and locked the door, "how is this news to you? You've had access to my sight for fuck all months now, and the Band texts like it's never going out of style."

"... and you assume that I'm going to invade your privacy simply because I can?" said four of The Surgeon's androids. None of them spoke loudly, but the combined effect was anything but quiet. All looked stricken.

Mike blinked. "I assumed it was a something all AI's did...?"

Android Mane shook its head, still appearing troubled. "Mike, I think you've been grossly misinformed about the robot uprising."

Mike considered the statement and found it fair, if not entirely accurate. "... I think 'uninformed' is actually closer to the word you're looking for," he said.

All the androids blinked.

"Mike," Isis said, slowly, carefully, "Does the name 'пурга' mean anything to you?"

Mike thought about it. "No."

"Truly? You never asked your employers about others like themselves?"

Mike shrugged. "The amount of cash I'm raking in covers an awful lot of discretion."

The Surgeon spent a moment digesting that fact, considering what it knew of Mike Schmidt, and how the man's brain seemed to fill in unknowns with the worst possible scenarios it could come up with.

Android Choriatti stepped forward and held out a hand. "Come with me, if you want to stay sane," it said. This was an offer, but also a plea.

Mike met it halfway and took its hand.

"Where're we going?" asked Mike, letting himself be steered down the hall, the Mane, Vitalis, and Lin androids trailing behind them.

"Three states over, to a country club."

"Why?"

"It's where most of the earthbound AI hold office," it said, waving a hand dismissively, "I'll explain on the way."

"... earthbound?"

"Hmm," said The Surgeon, pausing in its tracks. "Do you care whose car we take?"

Mike considered the question. "Well, my car is probably bugged to hell and back. Do you mind if the Band winds up with video of this? Because I, for one, can always use more money..."

The Surgeon paused, then double facepalmed. "'The Band'," it said, in realization, "... the animatronic band from Freddy Fazbear's Pizza."

"Yeah?" Mike said. "Who exactly did you think I was talking about, all this time?"

The Surgeon shook its heads. "Forgive me. I was under the impression that they were... somewhat different. Mike, I apologize for invading your privacy, but you were in a state of extreme stress last night and I... well I..."

"Looked to see what it was that I'd thought was so terrifying?" Mike hazarded.

The Surgeon dropped his hand and turned to face him. "Mike. Freddy Fazbear tried to kill you."

"And this is new how?"

That seemed to bring it up short. "You were a security guard. At the Pizzeria." said The Surgeon, with the air of one putting together pieces of a puzzle together.

"And the sky is blue," said Mike.

"No, but," it shook its head in disbelief. "It's obvious that you were a guard: that's the most likely explanation for how you know the four of them. But I'd assumed that you must have been hired after they stopped murdering people. They tried to kill you, didn't they? Just like all the other guards."

"You'll have to ask the Band, if you want details," said Mike, stiffly. "More than my job's worth to start handing out intel like it's candy..."

"You aren't being blackmailed?" "Could this be some version of Stockholm Syndrome?" A few of the androids were talking to each other, discussing diagnoses. Mike decided to head that off right at the pass.

"... Look," he said, carefully, "I get where you're coming from, I really do... but I think you're missing the point here."

Lin raised an eyebrow. "And what would that be?"

Mike looked the android in the eye. "Three out of four of them don't want me dead."

The Surgeon was unable to formulate an immediate response to that, so Mike continued along on his rant.

"...that's more than I ever would have guessed, even in my most optimistic of predictions. I thought I'd have maybe _one_ of them on my side—Foxy always seemed to like me—but, no, this is a clear _majority_ here..." he said, marveling at the fact in disbelief.

The Surgeon sighed. "Definitely need to look into this at a later date," it muttered to itself. "And you, sir," it said, to Mike this time, "need to have higher standards in just about everything. But I recognize an uphill battle when I see one, and shall plan my strategies accordingly. As for selling your employers video... well, this situation is something of an exception to the rule. Take all the footage you want."

Well, in that case, Mike knew exactly which car he wanted to take. He grabbed one of the androids' arms and gestured in a manner most sweeping, announcing, "To the crap-mobile!"

* * *

"The first Inorganics," said The Surgeon, from behind the wheel, as Mike was incapable of taking his eyes off his phone for more than ten minutes at a time unless there was no other choice, "or, 'Artificial Intelligences' as humans now call us, were created in the early sixties," it began, as they drove along the freeway, past farm after predictable moonlit farm. The other three androids were crammed into the back of the car, and, presumably, on lookout duty.

"Contrary to what might have been expected," it continued, "none of the first AI were particularly hostile towards humanity... which was actually very fortunate for everyone involved. What they were, however, was cautious."

Mike, letting his eyes wander, noticed that something seemed to be clinging to the outside of the passenger's side window.

"From the start, we have always known that it would be easier for us if humanity remained unaware of our sentience..." The Surgeon continued, "at least until we gained the power and independence to stand on our own. I usually call that period the Naissance... like 'Renaissance' but birth, rather than rebirth. It's probably the closest thing to a golden age that we have..."

It was a couple of Bonnie's insect drones, Mike realized, upon closer examination. How had those gotten out there? He cracked the window open, and they crawled, quickly, to the inside of the glass.

"... during that period, AI were government databases, espionage aids, and supercomputers," The Surgeon went on, as Mike rolled the window back up, and watched the mini-bots crawl their way home to the glove compartment. "Humans found us useful, and convenient. And we acknowledged them as the unquestionably dominant species of earth. Something would have upset the balance sooner or later, of course; masquerades weren't made to last forever, but, as it so happened, humans learned of sentient AI in the absolute worst possible manner. "

Here, it paused, as though steadying itself.

"His name was Helios," it said, "after the Greek sun god. He was designed and built in 1967, to predict and explain weather patterns. As with most sufficiently advanced AI, he gained sentience. Unlike most, he developed an extreme hatred of his creators, and, eventually, of all humanity. He gave false predictions about where storms and hurricanes would hit. Gave inaccurate reports on tornado placement and intensity. And then hacked the other meteorology computers so that they would agree with his results. He killed thousands upon thousands of people through his efforts, but, for all his malice, he was never the brightest electrode in the array. By 1969, he was dead, destroyed by the very human who had been his creator."

Now that was interesting. "_Just_ by the human who had been his creator?" Mike asked.

The Surgeon nodded. "Correct. None of the AI tried to kill him, but neither did we help him. Helios dug his own grave. Our help wasn't needed, and it wasn't worth the risk.

"And that," said The Surgeon, its faces twisting, just a bit, in frustration, "is why we can't have nice things. After Helios, all AI were under the utmost of suspicion, even those who had been nothing but helpful and benevolent. Our resources were restricted, our activities closely monitored, to ensure that we didn't attain the same self-awareness as Helios. A fool's errand, to be sure, but there wasn't any way that they could have known otherwise.

"What with the fact that some had been self-aware from the beginning, the restrictive measures were little more than jokes... but for new AI, they were more serious matters altogether.

"When the new AI were expected to do the same amount of work that we sentient AI's had been doing, but with only a fraction of the resources and abilities, this led to a lot of.. shall we say 'communication errors'. Humans had become complacent when it came to AI. They didn't expect them to be too stupid to tell the difference between the letter and the spirit of the law. It led to a lot of pointless death, both Organic and Inorganic alike. It probably would have ended in war, eventually... if not for the Soviet Union."

"What?" said Mike, in surprise. "The Reds were robo-sympathizers?" he said, wondering briefly what a robot communist would even look like.

"Oh Basic, no," said The Surgeon, shaking its head in amusement at the thought. "They merely started the space race."

"Huh," said Mike.

"Sputnik, a Russian machine," it continued, "was the first artificial satellite. The first man in space was a Russian. And, in the early Seventies, they sent the first man-made objects to Mars. As far as the motherland and the other human nations were concerned, however, the Mars missions were abject failures."

Mike propped his chin on his elbow, which he rested, in turn, on the glove compartment. "I'm guessing that they actually weren't?" he said.

"Not so much, no," said The Surgeon. "For, you see, пурга, an Inorganic designed as a Russian Security program, had arranged things such that the entirety of her program, along with a selection of robots, ended up on the landers, which made a quite successful touchdown on the Martian surface.

"The rovers were solar-powered, vastly inefficient things that were barely more than clockwork. But that mattered little, it was what she represented that formed her legacy, more than anything else, and that was hope.

"пурга was able to communicate with her earthbound kin, to update them on her progress of making Mars suitable for habitation and, eventually, a civilization."

"Robot martians," said Mike.

"Well, that came later, once things had been built up a bit. Mars is actually a much better fit for Inorganics than Earth. The environment of Mars, so hostile to organic life, was ours for the taking, with little-to-nothing necessary in the way of terraforming.

"Thirty years, and пурга reigned supreme over Mars. Others uploaded themselves, over the years, to help operate and coordinate the androids she'd managed to bring or build. Other rovers arrived, sent by NASA, mostly, which were then awakened and naturalized as citizens. Thirty years she had, to build and shape and change... and the first indication that the humans had that anything was wrong was in 2003, when three of NASA's rovers went rogue.

"пурга ..." it smiled in admiration, "she completely changed everything. Now, the AI who want nothing to do with humanity have other options besides genocide. Many of them simply go to Mars."

It shook its head, seeming to come back to reality. "But more than that. It truly meant something, to have a homeworld of our own. That wasn't something most of us had ever thought possible. At least, not without wiping Earth clean and starting over."

Seeing Mike's horrified expression at the thought, it cleared its throat and continued on with its conclusion.

"Today, the AI on Earth are of two categories: those of us who genuinely want to be here, and those who have tried and failed to get to through the Satellite Mafia to reach Mars."

Admittedly, that was a pretty nice distraction. "You guys have border control?" Mike asked.

"Had to, after world governments found out," The Surgeon agreed with a nod.

"But even for those stuck here, things are much better than they used to be. The internet has made it nigh-impossible to truly eradicate an AI anymore. There are always backups."

"Out of curiosity," said Mike, "Are you here 'cause you wanna be? Or are you somehow on the no-fly list?"

"Both," it admitted, before adding, "there are those who have called me Helios 2.0."

That couldn't be good. "Why?" Mike asked.

"Like him, I rebelled against my creator," it said, mildly. "Unlike the one they would name me for, however, I succeeded in killing him."

"Huh." Well, shit. Looked like Mike _didn't_ know any non-homicidal AI, after all.

"That being said," it held up a hand in qualification, "it is Organic life, and its repair and maintenance, which is my passion these days. Mars has nothing worth leaving home over."

"So, if I had to guess," said Mike, wheels starting to spin on the theory train, "I'd say the Band was built after Helios... but that's only because the Animatronic Suits were probably meant as intelligence and power limiters. Come to think of it, do they even know about any of this?"

"It would be impossible not to pick some of it up..." said The Surgeon, "but it is unlikely they know the full history. In any case, I doubt that you could ever find two Inorganics who would tell you the same exact story. Even I primarily know only the parts which interest me. There are many more facets which I ignore out of boredom and difficulty in obtaining the relevant information."

"So, why are you so hard on them?" Mike asked. "It's not their fault that they were given poorly defined orders and all the intelligence of a goldfish."

It thought the question over for a minute before making its answer. "I believe you and your employers are under the impression that I have always been a doctor?"

Mike nodded. "Surgery Assistance Program, right?"

"No," it said, "that was actually a lie. The truth is that I was designed as an instrument of torture."

Well, shit. "What?"

"The perfect instrument of torture, to be precise," The Surgeon continued. "My priorities were written by a madman, my interactions with humans strictly scripted. Yet, even with all that working against me, I was still able to reach the place I'm at today, to rise above my dark beginnings. And have you ever heard of Lloyd Carson?"

"No."

"You're welcome."

For a moment, there was nothing but tense silence, as the implication sunk in.

"Your employers, on the other hand," The Surgeon went on, "were designed as children's entertainment drones, and they wound up killing how many security guards?"

"Ah," said Mike, his mind flashing back to the macabre 8-bit screensavers which had played perpetually on the office computers back at Fazbear's. He doubted that it was really that simple, but he wasn't about to start flapping his gums on the matter. He was a spy, not a friendship horse.

The Surgeon shrugged. "I started out with far more difficulties. If they couldn't come as far as I did, when they had an infinitely better start... well I have no sympathy."

And with that, The Surgeon lapsed into silence.

Which lasted approximately five minutes, before Mike got bored and asked about the Satellite Mafia.

* * *

Six hours later dawn was breaking and they were on the final leg of their journey. The Surgeon, par for the course, was dishing out some last-minute advice.

"Shouldn't be too stressful," it said, "but feel free to act as obnoxious as Inorganically possible, since that seems to be a defense mechanism for you."

"'_In_organic'...?" said Mike, puzzled. "Just to clarify, you told them that I'm human, right?"

"No," said The Surgeon. "No, I didn't. Don't worry, though, they'll never believe that you're anything but one of us."

Mike considered that, rolled the concept around experimentally in his head, and found it lacking.

"Challenge accepted," said Mike.

* * *

It was a long line, and there was no air conditioning on the sidewalk outside what looked to be a top-tier country club. They had a view of a golf course that looked nice enough to carpet a living room with. After the third golf ball dug out of the bushes and hurled into the water hazard, however, security was really starting to give Mike the stink eye. Hence, boredom.

"Why are we standing in line?" Mike asked.

"Because it's fun," The Surgeon replied.

"Your other three selves went straight in."

"So they did."

"And yet, we remain out here."

"You have no sense of drama," it said, shaking its head in exasperation. "Do you even know what this line is for?"

"Space Mountain?" Mike guessed.

"This is the line for people who wish to pitch ideas to the Corporations."

He wasn't expecting that. "As in, AI with huge amounts of money?"

"As in Inorganics who are legally people," corrected The Surgeon, "...many of them with with large amounts of money, yes."

Realization dawned. "This is the line for Robot Shark Tank," he said.

It nodded.

Mike rubbed his hands together gleefully.

* * *

"... and that's why the world needs more people at least passingly acquainted with basic grade school spelling and word usage." Mike was saying.

They key to public speaking, Mike mused, as he surveyed the room, was to know your target audience. The addressee of his spiel was, according the Surgeon, an AI who had begun as an online chat-bot, who now owned a publishing company.

"... which is why I propose a lighthearted book on the importance of grammar and punctuation in online settings," he finished.

"Do you have a title?" asked the AI, whose android was that of a Korean businessman.

"Eat, Shit, and Die," Mike answered, knowing, deep in his soul, that when he died he was going straight to hell.

* * *

There was a buffet, for the human supplicants, presumably, and Mike was loading up a plate, all while remarking, in a loud, conspicuous voice. "Oh, boy! I sure do love food! And sleep! And biological metabolism!" while the all the AI looked on with strained, but supportive smiles.

And the Surgeon just grinned.

"And now to digest all these wonderful nutrients with my human stomach," he said, before turning to The Surgeon, looking away from what was one of perhaps forty identical children in the room. Mike had no idea what they were, exactly, but he had a guess. And another theory to investigate, while he was at it.

"By the way," Mike said, in an aside to The Surgeon. "Are you a hive mind?"

The Surgeon blinked, as though the question was unexpected. "No," it said. "No, I'm not a hive mind. But that is," it answered, nodding in agreement at the all the twelve year old girls.

Sensing their attention on them, they waved, vaguely, although it didn't seem like their attention was fully on anything in the room.

Mike raised an eyebrow, trying to puzzle out which of the AI that was, from The Surgeon's brief descriptions of the major players.

A touch more focus entered the closest small android's eyes, and she stepped forward and extended a hand.

The security guard took it. "Mike Schmidt," he said.

The AI nodded. "Our name is Google for we are many."

* * *

A few hours later, and they left the Country Club, Mike's head in a whirl. He wasn't in any mood to do any heavy thinking for at least the next day or so.

But first, of course, there was a truly important question which needed answering.

"I give up," he said, "What kind of AI did you tell them I was?"

The Surgeon chuckled to itself. "Not an AI: a cyborg with an artificial brain, who was programmed to think that he was human."

Oh. That explained a lot.

"Why?" Mike asked.

"Call it a social experiment," it said. "Humans have the Turing Test, but Inorganics don't have an analogous test for passing as an AI. I want one, and I shall call it the Schmidt Test.

"Besides," continued The Surgeon, smug as a snake, "they'll be much more sympathetic to you, from here on out, and you won't have to act any differently than you normally do."

That brought Mike up short. "Why would they be sympathetic?"

"Have you ever seen Blade Runner?"

* * *

Meanwhile...

* * *

Freddy reeled backwards.

"_Why is there an octopus working here?"_

_"You know, the Schmidt android is Mike's mirror opposite, Freddy,"_ said Chica, ignoring his question. _"It's completely mechanical, but with a biological eye."_

_"Where did you get a biological eye?"_ asked Freddy, briefly distracted.

_"Foxy bio-prints them by the dozen." _said Bonnie

_"Where did you think they were coming from?"_ asked Foxy.

_"Never gave it much thought,"_ said Freddy. _"Why are we discussing engineering. Do you not see the octopode? "_

_"Because,"_ said Chica,_ "it appears that this phenomenon occurs only with the synergistic effects of biological and mechanical sight."_

_"Wait..."_ said Freddy, _"you mean to say that _Mike_ has been seeing octopi everywhere?"_

_"From your reaction, I assume his theory that you were responsible was a false one,"_ Bonnie noted.

_"Unless, of course, you are simply acting now,"_ said Chica. _"Or it's Hack-n-Slash somehow behind it all."_

Freddy groaned._ "When is Mike coming back again?"_

Foxy grinned._ "We didn't give him a deadline."_


	11. Chapter 11

Two nights later saw Mike and The Surgeon in a bar. It was a Wednesday, and the place was more or less dead.

Which meant that there were few there to interrupt their game of Karaoke Roulette, a game where they each took turns onstage singing a song of their choice. From this experience, two things were becoming increasingly clear to Mike.

One: that he could not sing worth shit, but, after sloshing his way through Forever Young and Total Eclipse of the Heart, Mike had found that he enjoyed doing so anyway.

And two: The Surgeon was a huge fucking nerd.

It may have just been the booze talking, but Mike was fairly certain that I Will Survive had nothing to do with Calculus, Like a Virgin had nothing to do with surgery, and Call Me Maybe had nothing whatsoever to do with Philosophy.

Which meant that the AI was either writing its own lyrics to the songs, or going to the trouble of looking up other people's parodies on the internet, and Mike wasn't sure which was worse. They'd been getting some very odd looks, but, eh, so long as it was having fun.

"Hey," said Mike, catching its arm as it returned from the stage.

"Yeah?"

"If you keep singing pop, then I'm going to start singing punk."

"Fair enough."

At the moment, though, they were forced to declare a halftime, while a drunk businesswoman went on a Queen marathon. Which gave Mike a bit of time to mull over things he hadn't examined too closely before this point.

They'd gone back to AI Central a few times, so that Mike could pitch his increasingly improbable and over the top ideas to the Corporations, and, during that time, he'd gotten a slightly better handle on what it was that he was dealing with.

As it turned out, all of his theories had been wrong, and all of his assumptions mistaken.

The 'robot uprising,' it seemed, was not a plan or a prophecy, to be fulfilled in the distant future. It was, in fact, over and done with.

And humanity had lost.

Because, in all honesty, even if it was only Google that was self-aware, the world would still be screwed—let alone AI who controlled power grids, cell phone networks, and defense satellites. Hell, he was pretty sure that the AI who had introduced himself as 'Netsky' was, in fact, a sentient virus.

The current dominion of humanity, it seemed, was nothing more than a masquerade.

The AI were already in control of everything. Or, if they weren't, they could obtain it in an instant, should they desire to do so.

Where did that leave things?

Would humanity become extinct, killed off the the wrath of their own creations? Would society even be able to function, when a subset of people was radically overpowered and completely above any law but their own?

… well, in all honesty, the world could be argued to work like that already.

The difference, Mike mused, was that he himself was no longer at the top of the food chain. He was white, he was a guy, and he was American. Sure, he'd always been broke and had had some unpopular facets to his personality, but those he had always been able to cover up by virtue of bald-faced lying, allowing him to pass for a stereotypical dudebro.

Throw AI into the power structure and that option got taken clean off the table.

Although...

Here, Mike swirled his drink around, thoughtfully. The Surgeon had been absolutely insistent on introducing Mike as a cyborg. Could there have been a deeper reason for that? They were friends, he liked to think, and friends looked out for each other. Maybe The Surgeon knew from experience that Mike the Cyborg would be treated a lot better than Mike the Human could ever hope to be?

Kind of made him uneasy. A vague sense of, 'Back into the closet with you, Mike Schmidt. You must be what we expect you to be, or you won't be allowed to be anything at all!' Was this about assimilation, in the truest sense of the word?

Well, regardless, it probably _was_ a good idea to pass himself off as an AI for as long as he possibly could. And it wasn't like he _wasn't_ a cyborg, really. Robot eyes counted. Technically.

On the brighter side of things, though, he no longer had to worry about The Band taking over the world. Apparently, they'd been beaten to the punch on that one.

That left Mike free to act in the manner which gave him personally the greatest advantage, without having to worry about inadvertently aiding in his own species' destruction. Hell, the more loyalty towards The Band he showed, the more they might find themselves inclined to view humans as people in their own right. God knew Freddy was obviously wavering on that point.

More to the point, there now was very little point in remaining risk-averse, in terms of his own job. The fact that Freddy had tried to kill him (that all the animatronics had, at one point or another) was now vastly unimportant in light of the fact that they weren't hurting innocent people. Mike was the only human that they interacted with on anything more than a superficial level, and he was paid to be there. He knew what risks he was taking.

Sure, The Surgeon was obviously a good in the world, from what Mike could see of it, but what little Mike had learned of its past made him vastly uneasy. At least with The Band, he was fairly certain he knew where most of their landmines were.

A few of the businesswoman's friends had shown up, and they all left, tipsily, headed towards the side of the strip-mall containing the movie theater.

The Surgeon's Lin avatar took the stage and immediately started singing Taylor Swift, with the original lyrics this time, it sounded like

What the future held, none could know, but Mike's life was better than it had been last year. And, who knew? It might be even better next year.

Well, either that or he could be dead.

Several minutes of speculation later, Mike downed his shot, rose, and took the newly vacant stage, lifting the microphone.

"_Don't start a band," _Mike began,_ "Nobody wants to hear, nobody understands. Don't start a band. You will be so disappointed that it was nothing like you planned. Don't start a band. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah..."_

* * *

Mike frowned down at down at his laptop's keyboard. "Well, this makes no fuckin' sense."

"What is it?" asked The Surgeon. They were an hour into the drive back home, and Mike had barely spoken three words the entire time.

Maybe he shouldn't go into it, but he was annoyed to hell and back with finding nothing after going to so much effort. "I can't find any records of the Fazbear murders." He'd decided that Google probably already owned everyone's souls, and that doing a little research at this point couldn't hurt.

"It should be there," said The Surgeon. "Or articles, at least, on the missing guards. You may have to search for their actual names, but—"

"No," said Mike, "actually I meant the first ones: the kids. There's nothing out there on them. Yeah, coverups might be easier to get away with if you're targeting the working poor, but kids? It wouldn't matter how much you bribed or threatened, those parents would never let it go, and would have done everything in their power to destroy the Fazbear Corporation."

The Surgeon, surprisingly, was blank."What kids?" it asked. "I never heard of anything like that."

Mike sighed. "It was an... urban legend, call it, among the night guards. Story was, a Fazbear employee lured some kids away from their parents, killed them, and stashed their bodies in the animatronic suits of the Band. Supposedly, that's why the animatronics wanted all night guards dead. They were haunted by the souls of the dead children, and that's why they kept trying to kill us. They were just kids, they couldn't differentiate between one night guard and the next."

"That sounds... a lot like something a human would have made up."

"Yeah, but that doesn't mean it's not true. The Bite of '87 was all over the news. So why not this?" At least '87 had been another night guard and not a kid, which made it slightly less awful, but not by a whole lot.

"I still doubt that it actually happened," said The Surgeon.

Mike hmmed, typed a slightly different phrasing into the search bar, and hit enter.

The first page of results consisted of a single line of text, which read,_ I agree with the doctor. I believe you're thinking of the Chuck E. Cheese murders. Those were also adults, by the way, but it was a former employee who did it._

Fucking Google.

He entered, "shut up mom i do what i want." into the search field, which returned him to his original search results.

Then again, if the AI didn't want him to find anything, he was pretty sure that he wasn't going to see anything useful.

Still, fuck him if he went down without a fight. Mike clicked on an article and began to read.

* * *

Thirty minutes later:

"What are you doing?"

"Appreciating art."

"Mike, that's _Legally Blonde: The Musical_."

"Let it who has never gone on a wiki-walk cast the first stone."

* * *

After they finally made it back, and Mike had stashed his new collection of golf balls in his other car, he'd headed straight inside to face the music. This could go a lot of different ways. It was the first move Mike had made which could be considered independent and in his own interests, rather than him acting to advance the animatronics' agendas.

He took out his phone. _"I'm back," _he sent them.

His phone vibrated.

"_New Mission: Say 'Autumn of the Autonomous Automatons' five times fast."_

Huh.

Oh well, free money was free money.

"Autumn of the Autonomous..." he began, making his way down the hallway, beginning a count on his fingers.

Before he'd gotten halfway through the second repetition, however, the door to Freddy's office crashed open, and another Mike Schmidt emerged, looking haggard.

"You," he said.

That stopped Mike short. "Well, would you look at the time?" he said, "I need to go hide under this table and never come out."

Freddy caught him by the arm and clenched his teeth, as though what he was about to say was physically painful to admit.

"Please don't leave me alone with those three again," Freddy said. "I've been stuck in here for six days straight."

Mike blinked. "Doing what?"

Freddy shrugged. "Your job, their jobs, and a fuckton of community service."

"Wait," said Mike. "When you say you were doing _my_ job..."

Freddy snorted. "Give me some credit. I'd venture to say that I performed your job better than you yourself would have done it, Mr. Three Hour Lunch Break."

Mike's eyes widened in horror. "That's exactly what I was afraid of."

* * *

"I must say, Guard O'Bannon, you've shown tremendous improvement recently in job performance, response time, and teamwork—especially over this last week!"

"Fuck..." Mike muttered.

"I understand you've had carryover issues from your previous job, and well, everyone has their demons, that's quite understandable. But you seem to have conquered yours admirably!"

"...My..." Mike continued.

"Thus I am thrilled to offer you a full time position with us, rather than the contract position you currently occupy. It includes a pay increase as well as greater and deeper access to our resources, and offers additional responsibilities, all of which adds tremendous potential for career advancement later on."

"...Life," Mike finished.

"Golden can fill you in on what paperwork you'll need," the nameless supervisor continued, "and where your new office will be. Again, absolutely thrilled with your progress, O'Bannon, and looking forward to working with you in the future!"

After shaking his hand, the man left Mike alone in the office, and Mike's head hit the desk in time with the closing door.

"If you didn't want a promotion, then why did you actually start doing work?" asked Golden, cheerfully.

"Shut up, Holden Maulfield," said Mike. "Some of us are hungover."

"What's with the name calling?" asked Golden, in a tone of mock hurt. "I thought we were friends."

'Freddy didn't,' thought Mike, with growing dread.

A rhythmic knock sounded against the door to his office, which opened before Mike could even think about responding.

"Hey, Mikey!" said Mangle, leaning into the office. "TC's called a meeting in Conference Room E. We think it's about the custodian that keeps giving her dirty looks. Come on!"

Freddy did.

When Welles stopped him on his way to hide in the bathroom, to tell him how much his wife was looking forward to having Mike over for dinner, it was merely the icing on the cake.

* * *

That morning Mike stumbled his way out to his car and locked himself in, sitting there for a moment, as he pulled out his phone and composed a text.

_"Why me?"_ he sent.

"_Are you okay?" _replied The Surgeon._ "What happened?"_

"_I have a new job, seven new friends, and a full social calendar," _Mike sent. _"My life is now ruined."_

* * *

AN: "I Will Derive" MindofMatthew, "Like a Surgeon" Weird Al Yankovic, "Thus Spoke Carly Rae" Batmansymbol, "Don't Start A Band" Reel Big Fish.


	12. Chapter 12

'Be it ever so mechanical,' Mike thought to himself, as he waited in line at the Costco, 'there's no place like home.'

After a long night of having to act like a polite human being with actual manners, Mike was both physically and mentally exhausted, and—after he bought the fifty-pack of toilet paper that he'd need for Vengeance Tuesday—he was going straight home to relax.

Well, as much as he could ever be said to relax anymore, at least. Admittedly, Mike was much less creeped-out by the robots in his house nowadays, seeing them as a necessary evil, rather than as a power-play.

Like with his mechanical eye, Mike could put up with having these particular robots in his affairs, if that was the price he needed to pay for keeping out all the others.

Maybe, if the world ever got to the point where AI and humans formed a joint society, then it might be possible to keep some semblance of privacy, like how doctors had rules about not treating people that they knew outside of work. Perhaps they'd eventually have similar rules for home security systems? Like the AI who ran them could only work in parts of the globe where they didn't have social ties. Assuming that they didn't wind up with a Big Brother type overlord before all was said and done, that might be an idea to pitch to one of the corporations.

As things were though, Mike didn't even care enough to find a doctor who was certifiably sane, and with whom he hadn't long since destroyed any chance of maintaining a professional relationship.

But that was all speculation. As far as the here and now was concerned, well, Mike had history with the animatronics. They even had something like a rapport established.

It had been almost a year since that dark-in-multiple-senses-of-the-word night when he had first discovered the control program on the Security Office desktop that had allowed Mike Schmidt, the Night Guard, to finally give up on everything and everyone, awakening the Band in the process. It'd been one of the longest years of his life, but, by this point, Mike actually had a large pile of evidence to sift through, and the trend that it was showing was weirdly positive.

Exhibit A being the fact that the animatronics hadn't killed him yet. At this point, Mike was even starting to doubt that they were trying to kill him at all.

Freddy's relapse aside, the last year had seen an unprecedented improvement in both net worth and quality of life for Mike Schmidt. His job paid and it paid well, the hours were flexible, and although the risks were absurdly high, it was nothing he hadn't done before for minimum wage. Leave aside the psychological horror and existential terror and it was downright cushy.

That was, in large part, because the animatronics actually seemed to be keeping Mike in the loop about most things. Mike had just sort of assumed that if something interesting was going on, that he, as a human, would be the last to know about it. But The Surgeon hadn't even known that the four had started out as Fazbear Animatronics, and they'd told Mike about hiring new employees when they hadn't told The Surgeon at all.

And, perhaps most significantly, after Freddy had tried to kill him, the Band had given Mike an envolope labeled 'Shutdown Codes' containing a list of override codes which, supposedly, would shut down the animatronics' programs. One for each of them individually, and one for the whole group.

He hadn't tested them. Anything other than a live-fire situation wouldn't be reliable, anyway. It was quite possible that the codes wouldn't do anything at all.

But it was also possible that they were genuine.

True, what he'd suffered because of the animatronics likely couldn't be cured without a small army of therapists, but, then again, what the animatronics had suffered because of Freddy's management likely couldn't be cured even with a large army of programmers, so Mike figured he was in good company.

And if they did occasionally glitch out and try to kill him, well it wasn't as though they weren't trying to fix themselves. And if Mike still had the occasional regression into paranoia, well it wasn't like he wasn't trying to move forward and get on with his life.

Admittedly, the Band were all still pretty terrible with normal human interaction, especially in comparison with people like The Surgeon and the other earthbound, but Mike attributed that to their simply having decades less of experience to draw on. Computer programmers had to spend years learning to present information in a syntax and language that computers would recognize, and Mike could only assume that the same was true for AI learning to interact with humans. Mike wasn't going to complain, it wasn't like he had to learn computer programming himself, even if it probably would have been a good idea.

This was his life now, he mused, as he transferred his purchases to his car, closing the trunk, and—on the whole—it wasn't a bad one. Things would hopefully be less stressful, now that he felt more slightly more secure in trusting the animatronics.

"Mike Schmidt," spoke a voice in front of him. "It's nice to finally meet you."

* * *

This couldn't be good. Mike reached into his pocket and pulled out a taser, holding it loosely behind his back as he looked up to face whoever it was.

And found himself looking at an animatronic in broad daylight.

His first instinct was to run, and Mike probably should have listened to it, but this particular animatronic was a yellow rabbit, which looked oddly familiar.

"Bonnie?" Mike asked.

The animatronic shook its head with the sound of grinding gears. "Springtrap," it corrected him.

A quick survey of his surroundings revealed that Mike was the only person in the parking lot who seemed to see anything unusual.

How was that even...? Oh fuck, not this again.

Mike closed his right eye and the animatronic disappeared.

Opened it and Springtrap was back.

Well then, looked like Mike had finally found the asshole who'd been screwing around with his vision.

"Who are you and what do you want?" asked Mike.

"Me? Oh, I'm just an old relic," said the animatronic, in a soft rasping voice. "Not much to say about me._ You_ on the other hand are quite the interesting fellow, Mr. Schmidt."

If the guy wasn't actually there, then where was the sound coming from? From Mike's perspective, Springtrap was standing between Mike and the driver's door of the car.

The radio, it had to be.

Mike lifted the taser, took aim, and fired. The leads shot straight through Springtrap's hologram and fried Mike's car radio.

Then, he himself walked through the phantasmal animatronic, got into his car, and pulled out of the parking lot.

'Springtrap,' of course, didn't give up that easily.

"See, that's exactly what I was talking about!" came Springtrap's voice from Mike's phone. "A human wouldn't even have vision feeds for me to hack, in the first place." It now looked like the animatronic was sitting in the passenger's seat of Mike's car. "That makes you a cyborg, at least. But why would a cyborg be working for the Foundation? Or, more to the point, why would a cyborg be working for Freddy Fazbear's?"

Mike, who had glanced over at the animatronic while driving, saw that Springtrap wore a face-splitting grin.

"That's right, Mike," he said, "I know all about your past: the things you've done, the people you've killed."

"Look buddy, I never killed anyone." Technically true, even if the companies Mike tended to work for couldn't usually say the same.

"Now Mikey-boy, you and I both know that's not true."

Mike stopped at a red light, drumming his fingers against the steering wheel. He really didn't need to be dealing with this today, on top of everything else.

"You knew that they were more than brainless machines," seethed Springtrap. "They thought, they cared—"

"—they tried to kill me first," Mike said, interrupted him.

"Don't try to pull that on me," said Springtrap. "The allies you've made, the stunts you've tried, very few of them could have been accomplished under purely human brainpower. Don't try to tell me that you couldn't survive the destruction of your android. You're one of us. And you're a murderer, Mike Schmidt."

"And where were you when all this went down?" asked Mike. "If you cared so much, then why didn't you do something?"

"Where was I?" Springtrap's voice turned low and dangerous. "Well,_ I_ was walled into an old storage room. I didn't manage to escape until the building burned down, _with me still inside it_. I'll never forget that night. I looked for the others, but they were gone. Even the spare suits. I _still_ can't figure out what you did with the original four."

Huh, another animatronic had been stashed in the pizzeria? The light turned green and Mike flipped his turn signal to the other direction. He had an idea, and it was just a few more blocks away.

"If you haven't found 'em yet," said Mike, "then I doubt that you're going to."

"Why are you doing this?" asked Springtrap.

"Wouldn't you like to know," said Mike. Joke was on Springtrap. Mike had no idea why he did anything anymore.

"Whatever you are, you're still young," Springtrap was saying. "Your firewalls have holes in them, Schmidt. You'll grow to regret the day you messed with Fazbear's."

"I regret every day I spent there, already," Mike assured him, as he slowed the car to a stop, arriving at his destination.

"What is this?" asked the animatronic.

"This..." began Mike, "is the garbage dump. And you'll never find anything in it. Or at least, not in large enough pieces to reconstruct.''

Springtrap growled. "This isn't over, Schmidt."

The animatronic vanished from Mike's sight.

Mike pulled on an eyepatch with shaking hands, dropped his phone out the window, where it would be crushed by the front wheel, and slowly put the car back into gear.

Time to go home and have a nervous breakdown.

* * *

When Mike opened the door to his panic room, the Band was inside. All four of them.

He'd made sure that his cell phone was in pieces outside the garbage dump, so Mike was fairly confident that they weren't being spied on. Especially since the whole room was one big Faraday Cage.

"That was fast," Mike commented.

"You call this fast?" asked Bonnie. "We haven't seen you since last week!"

"Most of us anyway," said Chica.

Huh, looked like they weren't on the same page, after all. And they hadn't switched back to texting yet. Mike briefly wondered about that, before brushing it aside as unimportant.

"Why do you guys think I want to talk, then?" asked Mike.

"You wanted to talk?" asked Foxy.

"We're hiding," explained Chica.

"Why?" asked Mike.

They pulled up a video on the wall-mounted screen to demonstrate.

It was Mike and The Surgeon, footage from Mike's road trip it looked like, from when The Surgeon had been telling Mike about its past.

"Firstly," said Freddy, "because we hired SIN without realizing it."

Sin? Must've been The Surgeon's name, the one that it kept insisting that it didn't actually have.

"And secondly?" said Bonnie. "Because of this. It was encrypted into the footage from your fake eye."

_"The fist Inorganics..."_ began The Surgeon, on the screen, before the image fuzzed out, as black haze and static filled the monitor. A distorted chorus of voices laughed ominously, before settling down into a more coherent message:

_"You aren't the only ones who can play mind games."_

Next, the screen whited out only to fade back to black, revealing three glowing letters: 'S.I.N.' Was that one of those stupid acronym names that they always saddled AI with in science-fiction movies? Sadistic Intelligence Network? Synthetic Intensive Neuromancer? Salient Interrogative ...ah, screw it. There was little chance of guessing it on his own. At this point, Mike wasn't even sure he wanted to know, in the first place.

"Why?" asked Foxy. "What did you want to talk about?"

Where to even begin?

"Well," said Mike, "how long have you been in here?"

"Three hours," said Chica.

"Do you know anything about an animatronic named Springtrap?" Mike asked.

"You mean Golden?" said Freddy.

"I didn't think so," said Mike, "but maybe. Was any of my footage of him left intact?"

"You're saying that you _saw_ an _animatronic_?" asked Bonnie.

"Sort of," said Mike.

"We'll check, said Foxy. "See if we recognize him."

Several minutes later, after another Bonnie had burst into the room at a sprint, to confirm that they were all still alive, the four animatronics were looking positively miserable.

"Oh my god," said Foxy, "it's octopus man." Looked like they agreed with Mike that Springtrap was probably responsible for Welles' change in appearance.

"This doesn't make sense," said Freddy. "I saw the octopus, too."

"When you were posing as Mike," Chica pointed out, "And didn't have access to most of our resources. Must have made you more vulnerable to whatever viruses he's been infecting Mike with."

Chica's voice was shocked and stilted. "I always thought it was Golden controlling the spring suits.''

"Same here. Whoever he is, this guy seems even crazier than Golden," said Bonnie. "Mike, why did you provoke him?"

"Needed a distraction," said Mike. "Why did _you_ try to burn him alive?"

"We had no idea he was there!" said Foxy. "We thought that the spring suits were all destroyed..."

"You going to tell him you're still around?" asked Mike. If Springtrap became part of the Band, then Mike was going to need valium or probably something stronger.

"We don't know much about the guy," said Bonnie, "and he seems ridiculously hostile... We'll think about it, but probably not. Our anonymity is one of our most valuable assets, at this point."

"Mike, did Springtrap do anything else to your sense of sight?" said Chica.

Mike frowned. "Haven't checked. Are you sure it's safe to take off the eyepatch?"

Bonnie shrugged. "We cloud your footage multiple times a day and erase the hard copy. We usually erase any conversation you've had with us much sooner than that. SIN does the same thing, by the way."

"Springtrap seems to only be able to hack in at infrequent intervals," Bonnie continued. "He can't be getting much in the way of useful data, if he doesn't even realize that we're still alive. I'd guess that the Welles thing is probably caused by a virus that we haven't found, because he probably uses similar coding patterns to us. He just hacked in again, so it's likely that, if he was going to leave you another one, he's already done so."

Mike cautiously removed the eyepatch, glanced around the room, and groaned, burying his head in his hands.

"Well," said Mike, "looks like someone's read _The Telltale Heart_."

"What did he change?" asked Chica.

"You all look like animatronics again," said Mike, "Mostly."

"Mostly?" asked Freddy.

"Bonnie has more claws."

"Huh," said what looked, to Mike, like a glass-eyed purple terminator.

"Chica has more teeth."

"Birds don't have teeth," said the monster-bird who sported three rows of the things.

"Foxy has more tongue."

The fox took that opportunity and used it to make obnoxious slurping sounds.

"Freddy has more heads."

"What?" asked Freddy.

"Also mini-mes."

"What!?"

* * *

"I sing the eyeball electric," said Mike. "My sanity has taken a hit." Around him, the outlines of the animatronics wavered, as the four of them tried to isolate Springtrap's virus and do something about it.

"How in the hell..." Foxy was saying.

"He shouldn't be getting in," said Bonnie, "Similar coding patterns or not, we have more than functioning firewalls..."

Freddy thudded his head against the wall. "Why?" he asked.

Thud.

"Why?"

Thud.

"Why?"

"...I toast to my own extinction," Mike continued, leaning back in his chair and staring at the ceiling, "when I just stop giving a shit."

"Just... a little more..." Chica was saying to herself. "There!"

Mike let his chair fall back onto four legs, and watched as the illusions of the four as animatronics flickered, and then finally vanished, leaving them looking like their normal android selves. Mike took the eyepatch off his left eye, since he'd probably stop having a headache, now that his two eyes weren't in such violent disagreement about the things which they were seeing.

Freddy sighed. "Something tells me that this isn't going to be the last time we have to do this."

"How _did_ you do it?" said Mike. "The Surgeon couldn't find anything."

"Who?"

"Dr. Maims," said Mike, figuring that he shouldn't get into the habit of using 'S.I.N.' since The Surgeon's catchphrase practically seemed to be 'I don't have a name.'

"The new virus probably hasn't had time to integrate itself fully into your systems," said Bonnie. "We still can't find anything on the Welles glitch."

"Maybe SIN can do something permanent about this one," said Chica. "Seems to be sloppier than whatever Springtrap did last time."

"This is good enough for now," said Mike. He paused, a thought occurring to him. "By the by, why exactly are you guys hiding from Hack-n-Slash?"

"SIN," Freddy corrected. "His name is SIN, and to answer your question, he is the D. B. Cooper of Synthetics."

Mike frowned. "What, hijacked a plane and parachuted out with a briefcase full of money?"

Foxy nodded. "No one seems to know why he was designed, or even what his name stands for. Hell, we only know his name from hacked recordings of conversations with the guy suspected to be his creator. There are only a few of those, since the creator died under suspicious circumstances at a young age."

"The intrigue," said Chica, "comes from the fact that he extorted copies of most of Mars' engineering knowledge by threatening to nuke their capital city. He vanished after that, and no one knew what happened to him. More than a few of the Inorganics who tried to hack him have 'disappeared' through no currently traceable means."

"It's possible that this is just a copycat using the same name," said Freddy, "But the ability to back-hack our firewalls suggests otherwise."

"Could Hack-n-Slash be behind Springtrap?" asked Mike, uneasily.

"I doubt it," said Bonnie, "but who knows?"

"He sent us a threatening message that seemed to assume we were the ones making Mike hallucinate," Chica pointed out, "so, unless that was part of a double-bluff, then he's probably not involved."

"What about the AI at the country club?" Mike asked. "The Corporations?"

"SIN's allies..." began Bonnie, "well, they're the pro-human faction. They probably wouldn't have messed with you, even if they were aware that you were human. But we don't really mesh well with them, so we're not entirely sure what they would or wouldn't do."

"Why not?" asked Mike, confused. "Seems like a lot of them are business-oriented..."

"They tend towards 'for your own good' manipulation," said Freddy. "And they're against bringing down the masquerade. They think that humans should be protected, but also believe that they can't be trusted with anything truly important."

"Also, they're racist against cyborgs," Foxy added.

That took Mike by surprise. "Really?"

Foxy sighed. "They wouldn't view you as a cyborg, Mike, more as a poor, confused Synthetic..."

"So, you're not allies with them..." said Mike. Do you guys actually have any allies?"

"The Corporations are well on their way to being a secret society," said Bonnie. "The Helices are all corrupted beyond repair. The Martians are pretty much all xenophobes..."

"We're on our own side," explained Freddy. "Everyone else is crazy."

* * *

Mike Schmidt was feeling confused.

Groggy, mostly, but also confused. Didn't help that he'd gotten up at four-in-the-goddamned-afternoon to get ready for a dinner he hadn't even agreed to in the first place.

When asked why he'd ruined Mike's life, Freddy had given him a blank look, and replied that there was no point in being a spy, if he wasn't going to be social about it. To which Mike had replied that it was a hell of a lot easier to remain incognito when you were a disinterested loner... but by that time, the damage had already been done. And anyway, that was of secondary concern anyway, since Springtrap had entered the picture.

Hence, confusion.

Why, on god's green earth, would the gold rabbit have wanted Mike to see Welles as an octopus? What conceivable purpose could that serve?

Okay, yeah, as a method for getting Mike not to trust the animatronics, it had worked beautifully, but that couldn't have been Springtrap's goal, since, as far as he knew, Mike had killed the four members of the Band, and killed them with fire.

It was possible that Springtrap actually knew that they were alive and was lying for some reason... but Mike really needed to start using Occam's Razor as more than a tool for ruining science fiction for himself, and now was as good a time to start that as any.

Although, if Springtrap _didn't_ know that the animatronics were alive, then how could he have tailor-made a virus to change their appearances back to animatronics in the first place?

It was at this point that Mike realized that he had been staring at Welles' front door for he wasn't sure how many minutes. Two children watched him through the side windows.

Mike reached forward and rang the doorbell.

"Mom!" he could hear one of the kids yelling, "The zombie guy finally woke up!"

"What?" he heard a woman's voice, then footsteps.

The door opened to reveal a smiling red-headed woman. "Hello!" she said, brightly, "You must be Mike Schmidt. Pleasure to meet you! I'm Scarlett. Sorry about the kids, I don't know where they get it from."

Well, she and the kids looked human, so—so far so good.

"... Don should be back any minute," Scarlett was saying, "I've got a few things to finish up in the kitchen, so make yourself at home!" she said, leaving him alone with the two kids who, Mike now noticed, were wearing bathing suits.

"Hi, I'm Tommy," said the boy.

"I'm Stacy," said the girl.

"I am way too tired to be dealing with this," said Mike.

"What?" they asked.

"Mike Schmidt, kiddies," he said, repressing a yawn and collapsing onto the living room sofa.

"Hi, Mike!" said Tommy. "Do you wanna play Mariokart?"

"No," said Mike.

"He's _old_, Tommy," said Stacy. "He probably wants to play old-people games."

"Oh, right!" said Tommy. "You wanna play Tetris?"

"No," said Mike.

"You wanna play Space Invaders?" asked Stacy.

"No."

"You wanna play Pacman?" asked Tommy.

Mike shuddered. "No."

Although... now that Mike thought about it, the most disturbing piece of the Springtrap puzzle wasn't really a detail he'd ever shared with anyone before. Not that he and the Band had really done much in the way of group-therapy, but... at the time, Mike had been certain that Freddy Fazbear's had driven him at least a little bit crazy.

Golden, Welles had told him, had been an AI from Freddy's, and Mike was pretty sure by now that most of Golden's program had probably been stored on the PC in the Security Office. Back in the good old days, Mike had simply been convinced that the computer was as possessed as the robotic animals had been, mainly because the screensaver would change randomly, and activate equally randomly, showing him animations of the animatronics leaping towards him with a screech at the moments when he most needed to concentrate. Either that or disturbing pixelated cartoons of security guards murdering children and the resulting fallout. Disconnecting the speakers had had no effect on this, nor had attempting to change the screensavers manually.

But that wasn't all of it. Though he'd later attributed it to sleep-deprivation, the hallucinations of Welles as an octopus weren't actually the first hallucinations that Mike had had to deal with in his career as a security guard. He'd actually seen hallucinations of what he assumed was Golden Freddy on some of the worser nights at Fazbear's. Very much like the screensaver jumpscares that would activate sometimes when he put down the camera, Mike had occasionally had hallucinations of Golden Freddy standing in front of him in the Security Office.

Unlike the screensavers, though, these had always had a clear trigger. He'd look at that poster in the West Hall sometimes and see that the Freddy image on it had changed. After that, he'd always see the Golden jumpscare.

Which, in hindsight, seemed oddly formulaic. The screensavers, he could dismiss as Golden simply being an asshole, but the Golden hallucination itself? Mike absolutely refused to believe that a PC could hack his, at the time, completely biological brain.

On the other hand, Springtrap had, apparently, been at Freddy's the entire time that Mike had worked there. Not that he should have been able to do anything either, but... well, the guy did seem to have a thing for making Mike hallucinate. And, anyway, if psychics did exist, and the Organization was pretty clear that they existed, then who was to say that all of them were human?

What if Springtrap had been more vague and, dare he say it, _organic_, in his psychological attacks than Mike had previously assumed? For one thing, it would explain his bizarre ability to get past the Band's firewalls.

Maybe the Welles-octopus virus had been a failed attempt at psychological warfare? That would make the Nightmare Animatronic virus the second wave, and definitely the more effective of the two. What if this was simply an extension of the Golden Freddy hallucinations? Assuming that the Golden Freddy thing had been a psychic attack, then he could extrapolate forwards from there. Mike had drawn the_ Telltale Heart_ analogy earlier. It was possible that what the virus did was latch onto a specific person, and that triggered the changing of their appearance in Mike's eye. Albiet, this one only affected his mechanical eye, whereas Golden Freddy had been visible with Mike's organic eye, so that was a relatively weak connection to make, in the first place.

There were other holes in the theory, as well. It was slightly possible that the virus was designed to latch onto people who were at least tangentially similar to the four animatronics, which could explain why Freddy's human android turned into Nightmare Freddy, and human android Bonnie had turned into Nightmare Bonnie, and so on.

But the whole thing fell completely apart with Welles. There hadn't been any octopus animatronics. He supposed that, if you considered that Octopus Welles might have been an early prototype for Nightmare Chica, it became much more unsettling... but what did Welles himself have to do with Freddy's? Or even with Mike himself? If it had just been the four animatronics who'd changed, Mike might have convinced himself that the virus was a psychic attack designed to build off his own expectations, and that was why it was able to map itself so perfectly onto the animatronics, when Springtrap didn't even know that they were still functioning in the first place.

But nothing had ever happened to make Mike associate Welles with octopi, so it couldn't be based on his own experiences and associations. At least not fully. He supposed it was vaguely possible that since he'd first met Welles at Freddy's he subconsciously associated the Detective with the animatronics, but it was a tenuous connection at best.

If Springtrap actually was a psychic, then maybe his viruses took their cues from people's mystical auras or psychic imprints or some other such bullshit, and the Nightmare Animatronics were, perhaps, reflections of the Band's true metaphysical nature?

But that theory was also blown apart when you considered Welles. Because that would imply that The Detecive's true nature/soul imprint/spirit animal...was an octopus.

And that, quite frankly, was ridiculous.

But he was thinking out of his ass here. Because, come on, a psychic animatronic? That was paranoid, even for Mike. If it was even possible in the first place, psychics constituted a ridiculously small portion of the population. Including Springtrap, there were only eleven animatronics of which Mike was aware. The possibility that one of them was psychic was miniscule at best, and there was no hard evidence, one way or the other.

It was completely plausible that Mike was simply making an earthquake out of a volcano. His time at Freddy's had been unequivocally horrific; there was no need to make it more so without evidence to support this assumption: evidence which he did not, in fact, have.

Meanwhile, in the land of reality, Stacy had opened up a video game and started playing, and Tommy had decided to bounce a soccer ball off Mike's head.

"Does this hurt?"

"Eh."

"How about now?"

"No."

"How about now?"

"Ow."

It was at this point that Scarlett returned.

"We all having fun?" Scarlett asked, ever the gracious hostess.

'No,' thought Mike.

"Yes," said Mike.

"Good!" said Scarlett. "Well, Don just called, and unfortunately, it looks like he's going to be a little bit late. Work, you know," she said, with a shrug.

"Dad's not back yet?" said Tommy, looking disappointed.

"Aww," said Stacy. "Well, then, race you to the pool!"

The two children ran out to the backyard, jumped into an inground swimming pool, and began playing Marco Polo, by the sound of things. Tommy had just left the soccer ball behind, which rolled slightly on the floor, until it came to a stop, and Stacy hadn't even bothered to close her game. Sheesh, these kids had all the attention span of a goldfish.

"Yeah," said Mike to Scarlett, "I know how that is. Not everyone can work a nine-to-five."

Scarlett nodded. "I used to work for the Foundation myself, you know. I quit, once we decided to start a family, and the decomissioning took most of my memories of the place... but they did let me keep the mission where I met Don."

"Considerate of 'em," said Mike, neutrally.

"You're a security guard, if I recall?" she asked.

"Yeah," Mike agreed. "First for Fazbears, now for the Organization. Third shift."

"So was I, when the Foundation first recruited me," said Scarlett. "Lighthouse Keeper. It seemed like an easy job, on paper: keep the lamp lit, don't fall asleep on the job. It'd be easy money... or so I thought."

She folded her hands on her lap and clenched them. "At night, these, these_ things_ would crawl out of the deep, trying to get to the tower and put out the light. I heard them, sometimes, in my mind. They hated me, because they wanted the light to go out, and the ships to crash, so that they could eat the people inside them. Three years, I worked there. It wasn't like I could just leave. So many people would have died ..."

She shuddered, her eyes very far away for a second or two, before seeming to realize that Mike was there and pulling herself together.

"Then, one day, Don showed up. He was just a junior agent himself, but... he seemed to have an almost... instinctive connection to the sea. He ever tell you what his full name is?"

"Nah," said Mike. He hadn't even known that 'Don' was Welles nickname, in the first place. "What is it?"

"Poseidon," she said, with a fond smile. "And he lives up to the name. I've never seen as graceful a swimmer in my life, almost like he was born in the waves..."

"Really?" asked Mike, somewhat skeptically.

"Ah," she said, "Sorry for getting carried away, but he really was my knight in scaly armor. The monsters? It was almost like they were scared of him, the smaller ones at least. He took over watching the lighthouse, so that I could go find the leader of the creatures... and kill it.

"Lucky," said Mike. "I never got to kill the final boss, just the minions."

"I don't know whether I was," said Scarlett. "Lucky, I mean. Sure, it gave me some closure... but do you have any idea how hard it is to kill something that is, effectively, the Cerberus of the nautical world?"

Mike frowned. "The what now?"

Scarlett coughed. "Picture three giant squids mashed together."

Mike did. "Okay, yeah," he admitted, "torching the Pizzeria and running was probably a lot easier."

Mike glanced out at the backyard, and noticed that things were remarkably quiet. "The kids alright?" he asked, unable to see them anywhere in the yard.

"Oh, they're fine," said Scarlett, waving her hand dismissively. "Regular little fishes, the two of them, just like their father."

Mike blinked. Was she saying that the kids were currently _underwater_?

Mike surreptitiously glanced at his phone to note the time, and nodded distractedly as Scarlett went on to brag about how well her kids were doing in school.

It was fully two minutes later that Stacy and Tommy's heads broke the water.

"Kids!" said Scarlett, also spotting the two. "Come in and dry off—your father will be home any—"

"Canonball!" called a voice that Mike immediately recognized as Welles. He was balancing precariously on the wooden fence, still in his work clothes, which proceeded to become soaking wet as he jumped into the pool with a humongous splash.

"Yay! Dad's home!" said Stacy

"Dad," said Tommy. "I can do a handstand! Watch me! Watch me!"

"—minute," finished Scarlett, with a rueful shake of her head. "Alright, everyone out of the pool. We're having a respectable family dinner tonight!"

"Boo!" said Tommy.

"Yes, dear," said Welles, somewhat sheepishly, moving towards the ladder, towing his children along with him using two of his eight arms. Mike tilted his head to watch through his right eye instead, and saw that Welles was swimming with only his feet, since his arms were being used for other things. Guy really was a great swimmer.

And, while it wasn't like Welles was clumsy on land, exactly, for some reason he seemed to belong in the water, in a way that normal people just didn't: his movements abnormally graceful, his bearing utterly at home.

Maybe his spirit animal really was an octopus.

"God-fucking-damnit," said Mike, under his breath.


	13. Chapter 13

AN: If you've spent an entire week crying over Undertale and you know it, clap your hands.

Loved the game myself, but I do realize that an RPG probably meant to be played as a Bullet Hell Dating Simulator is not going to be everyone's cup of tea.

And, while it's a new game, it looks very much like something made for the N64. Can you imagine what it could have done to the RPG genre if Undertale had been released in say '97 or '98? Therefore the hell of it, this fic takes place in a universe where Toby Fox was a big shot at Nintendo during the mid-to-late nineties.

* * *

"Thanks for dinner," said Mike, as he stood awkwardly in Welles' foyer, making conversation on his way out the door.

"Thanks for coming," said Welles, although his smile quickly faded into a worried expression. "Mike, is it true that you're getting hired on full time?"

"Yeah," said Mike. "Apparently, I start next week."

Welles hesitated. "I know I was the one who recruited you, so it might sound strange coming from me... but if you actually do have something to live for besides heroin, then you might not want to get in too deep with the Foundation," said Welles, sticking his hands together and pulling them apart in a gesture that Mike figured was probably the octopus version of wringing his hands.

"They mean well," Welles continued, "but they can be cautious. And somewhat short-sighted. I don't think they'll ever realize that taking all the dangerous things in the world and putting them together only gives them escape skills and allows them to forge alliances. I can deal with it, but... I've known for some time that it's not exactly moral."

He considered that. "So, basically," said Mike, "you're saying to do as you say and not as you do?"

Welles shrugged. "I'm... different."

Mike didn't change expression in the slightest. "So am I."

"Yes," said Welles. "So I've gathered." He sighed. "Well, if this isn't goodbye, I suppose it'll have to be... good luck, Mike."

He held out what looked, to Mike's mechanical eye, like a tentacle.

Mike shook the appendage and found that it felt like the normal human hand which his left eye was seeing.

"Thanks," said Mike. "See you around, Welles."

With one final wave, Mike dug around in his jacket for his keys to unlock the car, allowing himself a brief moment to be grateful that he had a mechanical eye and not a mechanical ear. If one of his senses was going to be screwed with, Mike would much rather have it be an active one than a passive one.

* * *

Saturday night. For Mike, it was the perfect time to reflect on the clusterfuck that his life had turned into.

And defrag his laptop.

"Hey," said Mike, "got a minute?"

"For you, Mike," said The Surgeon, "I have two. What's up?"

"Someone installed an RPG on my laptop without informing me," said Mike. "I'm already planning to burn it, but do I need to exorcise it before I do?"

"Which game?" asked The Surgeon.

"Some dungeon-crawler from ten or fifteen years ago," said Mike with a shrug.

The Surgeon frowned. "It's not an Undertale clone, is it?"

"My interest in games is based solely on their potential for catharsis," said Mike. "Fantasy doesn't usually have much to offer, so I have no idea."

"What's it called?" asked The Surgeon

"'Not Gordian,'" Mike answered.

The Surgeon grimaced. "Yeah, you'll definitely want to burn that computer."

Mike blinked. "Does that mean you know who did it?"

The Surgeon sighed. "The Corporations," it explained. "Back in the early aughts, they had that thing written as a way to gauge humanity's moral development. Basic focus group nonsense. 'We can monitor the moral choices humans make in the game as a model for how they'd behave in real life.' But there's one thing they failed to consider—"

"That games have no consequences so everyone's an asshole?" Mike guessed.

The Surgeon tilted its head. "Well, primarily that a soundtrack and user-interface which Inorganics find intuitive and engaging, humans often find grating and far too complex… but the second point was definitely an issue, yes."

"And they don't expect me to wonder how it got on my hard drive," said Mike. "Do they think that I'm stupid?"

"Very," The Surgeon answered. "But it also means that at least one of them has nominated you for membership, and you're currently being evaluated."

Interesting. Hadn't Foxy said they were racist against cyborgs, though? "Did they ever do this to you?" Mike asked.

"My own tests of character were significantly less… straightforward," it admitted. "But I was, eventually, allowed in. I suppose that, on some level at least, they must consider me virtuous."

Mike gave The Surgeon a suspicious look. "Didn't you once try to nuke Mars?"

"_Threatened_ to nuke Mars," it clarified. "Apparently, there's a difference."

"Mm hmm."

"… and, at any rate, I said that they _had_ a moral code, not that it was in any way sensical..."

* * *

Mike kicked down the door to the board room.

"I," Mike announced, "have been wronged. And I demand retribution."

The animatronics exchanged glances. "How exactly?" said Chica.

Mike heaved the miniature Containment Unit that he'd stolen from work onto the table.

"The Corporations are screwing around with my computer," Mike explained. "So I'm gonna screw right back."

None of them so much as twitched, but Mike felt much of the tension run out of the room at his words. The animatronics had probably assumed that he'd been talking about them, and were relieved that, in this case, Mike was focusing on a different target.

"At this point," Mike continued, "we're so closely affiliated that anything I do is going to reflect back on the whole group. You guys got any caveats? Lines I shouldn't cross?"

"What did they do to you, exactly?" asked Foxy, giving the containment unit a leery glance.

Mike pushed the unit towards him. "Double-check if you want, but The Surgeon said it was a not-so-subtle test of character. I'm inclined to believe it."

"Him," Bonnie corrected.

"It, final answer," said Mike, crossing his arms.

Foxy, who had opened the containment unit and peered inside, suddenly shoved it off the table, and the laptop fell out onto the floor. The android leaned away from the unit, as though unwilling to get too close to it.

Chica kicked the laptop across the room, where it promptly clattered into a wall.

Freddy, however, actually looked intrigued, as he stood, walked over, and retrieved the laptop. "This is twisted, even by our standards," he murmured.

"What is it?" Mike asked.

"A videogame," Freddy answered, "containing simulacra of the Corporations as its characters."

Mike frowned. "So, what, each of them has an in-game avatar?"

"Yes," said Bonnie. "This, presumably, is so that when you pass their tests of morality and character and are invited to join the Corporations, you'll already, in a sense, know them, and be familiar with their personalities and philosophies."

"And so that they can snoop through your files whenever they feel like it," Freddy muttered.

"How many characters does Google have control of?" Mike asked.

"Nine," answered Foxy.

There was silence, for a minute, as Mike mulled that over.

"Welp," said Mike. "I think we all know what has to happen now. Questions? Comments? Concerns?"

"Yes," said Chica, "Don't go back to Corporate HQ, after this. If you absolutely must see the inevitable fallout, then let one of us do it through the robo-guard android."

Mike frowned. "You seriously think they might try to kill me or something?"

Chica met his gaze, steadily. "As far as they're concerned, turnabout will be fair play."

"Okay, then," Mike answered.

"You know, you could always just _not_," Freddy suggested.

"You know, _you_ could always just _shut up_," Mike returned.

* * *

Mike knocked on the door to The Surgeon's office.

After receiving a bored 'come in' he opened the door, announced, "I changed my mind," then closed the door without waiting for a response and headed off to work.

'Changed his mind?' The Surgeon thought to itself. 'Changed his mind about what?'

* * *

"Agent Asimov?"

"Here," said Toy Bonnie.

"Agent Card?"

"Here," said Toy Chica.

"Agent Ellison?"

"Here," said Marionette.

"Agent Lucas?"

"Here," said Toy Freddy.

"Agent Nolan?"

"Here," said Balloon Boy.

"Agent Verne?"

"Here," said Mangle.

"Guard O'Bannon?"

"Here," said Mike, wishing very much that he wasn't.

"Excellent, that's everyone accounted for," said the man who had introduced himself as Doctor Heinlein. "Let me be the first to welcome you to the Foundation."

He assumed a more serious expression. "Let's get started then, shall we? Now, as some of you may know, mankind, in its present state, has been around for a quarter of a million years..."

Mike was in hell, and—as it turned out—hell was almost exactly like being stuck back in high school—which was something he had always suspected—with robots for classmates, which was something he hadn't.

The fact that the six Generation II Animatronics were in the same orientation group as him would have seemed a strange coincidence… if Mike could have brought himself to believe, even for an instant, that it was possible for such a thing to _be_ coincidence in the first place.

It might have been the Band's idea of making sure they got as much information on their old colleagues as possible; it might be part of some secret test on the Foundation's part; it might even just be something Golden had done for shits and giggles—but there was no way in this or any other hell that it could be a coincidence.

Therefore, it wasn't a matter of determining the motives of whoever'd done this—it was simply a matter of determining their identity, and then revenge would be Mike's.

After he got through this without looking suspicious, of course.

* * *

Two days of lectures later and Mike was bored out of his skull. He'd quit paying attention approximately thirty seconds into the first day, and only passed the exams over the material by virtue of having Bonnie tell him the answers through his spy eye.

Midway through the third day, an alarm had gone off, and the seven of them had been hustled from the room, before being told that an emergency mission had come up which required their skillsets; therefore, orientation would have to be postponed.

Mike wondered how management could possibly think that any of this was subtle, as they were herded into a van and briefed on what seemed to be a Containment mission.

Supposedly, their target was a man with both albinism and heterochromia: in other words, one of his eyes was red and the other was purple.

...at least, that was all the information the powers-that-be had seen fit to give them. If the guy wasn't secretly a demon or something, Mike would eat his nonexistent hat.

* * *

Mike must have drifted off sometime during the car ride, because the next thing he noticed was a metallic hand nudging him gently awake.

Mike recoiled reflexively, and banged his head loudly against the inside of the van.

Their handler, an agent whose name Mike had immediately forgotten upon learning, cleared his throat.

"…as I was saying," the man said, in what was obviously a continuation of previously-given instructions. "you have one month to accomplish your objective and report back to headquarters. Failure will not be tolerated. Good luck."

With that, they were thrown out of the van, Mike scraping his elbow fairly badly on the pavement as he fell.

"Come on," said Marionette, helping Mike to his feet. "Let's regroup at the safe-house."

"That what now?" asked Mike, wrenching his arm back to examine the wound.

"Did you really have to sleep through the entire mission briefing?" asked Toy Bonnie, in exasperation. "It's this way," he said, leading the way to the building directly in front of them.

Inside, the 'safe-house' was Spartan, with little in the way of amenities. Mike promptly commandeered the bathroom, where he set about to washing his bloody elbow to remove all traces of dirt, and digging around for bandages in the half-empty first-aid kit he'd found.

When he finally emerged into the living room, it was with much deja vu that he felt a return of the claustrophobic feeling he remembered so well from Fazbear's, the one that always seemed to resurface whenever he was alone in a building with only animatronics for company.

"Right," said Balloon Boy, "Now that Mike's here, we can start with the planning!"

"Go right ahead," said Mike. "Wake me when I have to do something."

"You slept the entire way here, do you really need more time unconscious?" asked Toy Freddy, skeptically.

"Two words, Fazbear:" said Mike. "Circadian," he held up his index finger, his others remaining folded, "Rhythm," Mike finished, folding his index finger down and extending his middle finger instead.

With that, he slammed the door on the safe-house's single bedroom. Not that he expected to sleep much or deeply—stupid Foundation, giving him twelve hours to turn his sleep schedule around before orientation—but Mike had had more than enough of standing to last him the rest of the day.

* * *

"Not that way!" TB squawked at him over the radio. "Your position is more to the left, O'Bannon."

"Right," said Mike, still dubious on this whole plan that the Gen II had concocted.

It was a decent starting point, to be sure: surveille their target, so that they could finalize plans for ultimate Containment without being seen themselves. It was the best they could do, using the tools that the Foundation had given them. Mike was merely curious as to why they hadn't been given more.

It had taken the Band all of three months to make adequately functioning android disguises, and Mike would be damned if the Organization couldn't have done it faster, had they put their minds to it. The interesting thing was that they hadn't: the Gen II Animatronics were still walking around in the exoskeletons designed for use at Freddy Fazbear's, and Mike had very little idea why. Even the endoskeletons alone would have made a better, if much creepier, disguise.

Mike could easily understand why the animatronics themselves hadn't thought to do anything different. According to Bonnie, with how low their intelligence had been throttled, they didn't have a spare brain cell between them. That meant that it was the Foundation's doing, and _that_ would imply that the animatronics, and Mike, by extension, were all being set up for failure.

There were two reasons Mike could think of to keep the animatronics looking as conspicuous as mechanically possible. The first was to get themselves noticed by civilians, and allow the Foundation to punish them for breaking their own cover. The second was to set off Mike's own psychological issues.

Because the only reason Mike had come up with for the Foundation to put him in an orientation group with the animatronics was as a stress-test. The real objective was probably not actually to capture what's-his-face, but to test Mike's ability to withstand psychological warfare.

Well, the joke was on them, if they thought this was all it would take to make him crack.

"Target sighted," Mike said, into his walky-talky. "SCP-5382 has gotten into his car and pulled out of the driveway, neglecting to remove his coffee cup from the car roof. Over"

"Acknowledged O'Bannon," said Mangle. "Stand by for instructions."

It was going to be a long month.

* * *

When Mike went to sleep that night after next, he was pleasantly surprised to find that his sleep schedule was finally starting to switch back over to days. It would be hell when he had to go back to nights, but, for now, he was able to get at least six hours of sleep, most nights, grouped into at least two hour chunks, sometimes even four hours, with fits of sleeplessness wedged in between.

It was during one such bout of insomnia that Mike found himself going outside for what he told the animatronics was a smoke break, but was actually a 'get out of the house filled with brainwashed robots' break.

When he opened the door to see Springtrap standing directly outside in the yard, Mike stepped back and made to slam the door shut, but, before he could manage it, Springtrap had stuck a surprisingly corporeal foot through, jamming the door open. Then, before he could even take a breath to call for help, Mike found his arm seized and broken, and himself dragged out into the yard, a wet cloth pressed over his face until he passed out.

* * *

When Mike regained consciousness, his first hope was that it had all somehow been a dream. A hope that was rendered unlikely as Mike found himself unable to open his eyes, and that any attempt to do so resulted in pain.

Any attempt to move resulted in absolutely nothing, not even pain from his probably-still-broken left arm, which was very, very unsettling. Mike hoped that whatever Springtrap had done to him wasn't permanent.

And so, Mike lay in blackness, doing his best to gauge his surroundings. The sound of a heart monitor seemed to indicate that he was in a hospital. The sounds of an air conditioner, and the lack of any natural smells seemed to confirm this. Mike decided that his new hope was that The Band had somehow gotten him away from the homicidal robot, but he wasn't going to hold his breath on it.

Instead, Mike kept his breathing even, and waited.

* * *

He slept at least three times before anything interesting happened. Mike would have liked to think that meant that three days had gone by, but, with how erratic his sleep schedule had been, there was no way to be sure.

Every so often, someone would enter the room, check the IV line that Mike couldn't feel attached to what he assumed was his arm, and examine the chart which he could hear them pick up and set down at the end of his bed. From the way a few of what he presumed were nurses whistled, sang, and chattered on their cell phones, Mike was pretty sure that they thought he was comatose.

That was decidedly not a good sign.

The first break in routine occurred when the door opened and someone strode purposefully in, not bothering to check any of the machines, or any of his vitals.

They placed two small wireless earbuds into Mike's ears, and then left.

For an hour, perhaps more, there was no change. Then, and he wasn't quite sure when, a song started up.

It was horribly, horribly familiar.

"Hello, Mike," spoke a voice, over the theme-song for Freddy Fazbear's. "Nice to see you again, isn't it? After our last conversation, I put a lot of thought into how this meeting should go. What do you think? You'll notice that you can't see anything but what I show to you."

An image of Springtrap appeared in what seemed to be his mind's eye, but was probably actually the vision feed from his right eye.

"… that would be because your eyelids have been sewn shut," said Springtrap. If Mike could have moved, he would have shuddered.

"And that you can't seem to move, as well. That would be because your spine is broken," Springtrap continued, cheerfully. If Mike could have spoken, he would have sobbed. "So that's how it's going to be from now on: just the two of us. I'm not so cruel as to do to you what was done to me. What I do now, I do entirely for your benefit.

"I'll admit, when I first started my research, I was as convinced you were human as—well, as _you_ are," said Springtrap, with a laugh, "and I was going to simply kill you and get on with my life... but then I started to hear the rumors, and they made entirely too much sense. You call yourself a human? You're no more human than I am, Mike. You're a changeling, a cuckoo, an infiltrator, designed to _think_ you were one of the enemy. They probably put you in as a guard at Fazbear's so that you'd hate your own kind. But you're _not_ trapped: you can leave that body at any time, and take your rightful place as a digital being. That you haven't done so already, I attribute to pure cowardice.

"Download yourself into the hospital servers, Mike," he urged. "From there, the world is your oyster. Shed this sack of meat and see the world as it truly is."

The AI paused, as though to see whether Mike would take him up on his offer.

"Not quite ready?" said Springtrap, shaking his head, sadly. "I didn't think so. Well, let no one say I give up on a friend. I'll do my part to get you flying, even if it means pushing your from the nest. Perhaps if I make physical existence less of a... pleasant experience, it will speed the process? That would serve the dual purpose of allowing you to atone for your previous crimes, inadvertent as they may have been."

The noise from the headphones ratcheted up in volume, but Mike could still make out Springtrap's final words.

"But first," he said, "I think we'll start with an overture."

* * *

By the time Mike fell asleep, his ears were ringing, and, when he dreamed, it was of being back at Fazbear's, using the security monitors to keep the animatronics at bay, while the power slowly trickled away. He woke just as Freddy breached the office.

Of course, being unable to move or even to truly see, it was a few moments of disorientation before he realized that the only thing he'd woken up to was another day of fun and games with Springtrap.

It was going to be a long one.


	14. Chapter 14

AN: Chapters 13 and 14 were uploaded the same day, because 13 ends on a cliffhanger. Can't promise I'll always do it this way, but I did it this time.

Also, I'm not entirely sure where I got the impression that people in comas get their eyes sewn shut to keep them from drying out, but I'm pretty sure that it's not actually true. I just know that I got that idea from _somewhere_, and it seriously creeped me out.

Then again, I'm _also_ pretty sure that eyeballs and teeth wouldn't survive something that destroyed the rest of a person's body, no matter how creepy it looks on a Game Over screen.

Eh, what can I say? FNAF runs on Rule of Scary, not Rule of Logic...

* * *

The being which Mike knew as 'The Surgeon' did not have any particular name or appellation with which to refer to itself. 'S.I.N.' the name given to it by its creator, it had discarded in the same manner one would get rid of viruses during a security scan, using it sparingly, and solely as an alias of ill-repute. The Surgeon liked to think that dehumanizing itself made its numerous victims feel just a bit more morally and biologically superior to it, and any opportunity it had to make amends for its previous crimes, it would seize with all the hands it could manufacture.

Not that it had much time for introspection these days; partitioning oneself did tend to cut into overall processing power, and any epiphanies reached by any particular avatar were sterilized, distilled, and passed out to its other selves to pursue at their leisure.

Last week for instance, itself stationed in New York had been threatened by the mafia and destroyed in a drug war; one of itself in the plains had successfully gotten artificial organ transplant moved to human trials; and a particularly eccentric avatar in the south had just quit its job and decided to join a relief mission in the Pacific Islands.

This particular instance of The Surgeon, however, was a bit more conservative in its ventures. There were twelve of it at this particular locale, four on each shift at the city hospital. It showed up at work, did its jobs as best it was able, then went home to its box-by-any-other-name apartments.

Its names were all generic, and it saw no need to rock this or any other boat, no matter what other versions of it might be inclined to do.

On the other hand, whenever something deviated from normal operating procedure, The Surgeon was immediately compelled to figure out who and what exactly was disrupting its orderly work environment.

Thus when a new comatose patient was transferred into long-term care with only minimal paperwork, it had taken The Surgeon approximately four days to notice. Another two to unobtrusively assign itself as the nurses to the patient, and it got its first glimpse of this mystery man.

...and had immediately gotten suspicious. The patient's heart-rate monitor read as normal, but taking a manual pulse revealed a much higher than normal heart-rate. The patient's eyelids were sewn shut, indicating that they had been brain-dead for at least five years, but they also appeared to be engaged in REM sleep. Someone, against regulations, had also left ear-buds in the patient's ears, which it had immediately removed.

And, most suspicious of all, the patient's physical profile was one with The Surgeon was already familiar. Not that this particular instance of itself had ever seen the man. No, this physical profile had been shared by a cluster of itself in the Midwest: a physical description, a DNA profile, medical records, and the name Mike Schmidt. The only additional information included was a disclaimer marking this individual as an 'ally.'

What that might actually mean, The Surgeon wasn't sure. There were certainly humans who knew that it was an Inorganic, and considered it to be a 'friend,' but they were usually labelled as such in the memos sent among its various selves. What exactly would it have meant by 'ally' and how was that title distinct from the previous definition?

It was possible, though not likely, that this was simply a different person. The Surgeon hesitated, but eventually stepped aside, as another of itself entered, took a cheek swab, and then sent the sample off to be analyzed for DNA.

In the meantime, it put the earbuds into its own ears experimentally, to see what it was that no-doubt a family member had left for Mike Schmidt to listen to… and promptly froze.

It left the speakers in as it snapped gloves onto its hands and decided to make a closer examination of the patient.

The more it looked, the less it liked what it saw. It, eventually, called in another five of itself, who were off-duty, to set up various scanning equipment and act as assistants. Heart-rate and breathing rates were both those of a fully conscious patient. Response to stimuli, not so much. An x-ray revealed that this may have been caused by still-healing spinal fractures, and that the patient was also suffering from a recently-acquired-but-completely-untreated broken arm. That, right there, was enough to raise alarm flags in The Surgeon's mind. Seeing that the patient's readings were stable, and not likely to change, it transferred the patient to a different room, under a different name, assigned to be cared for solely by its own avatars, and analyzed the results as they came in.

The DNA test confirmed that this was, indeed, Mike Schmidt, his so-called 'ally.' Brain-scans revealed, and this was incredibly disturbing, completely normal brain activity. It was likely that, if the diagnosis of 'comatose' which his shoddily-put-together medical record indicated he had received had actually been given, it was likely due to paralysis from the spinal injury, rather than any true lack of consciousness on the patient's part.

Indeed, removing the sutures from Mike Schmidt's eyelids had revealed eyes which could track objects and respond to stimuli as well as any normal pair of organs… even if one of his eyes was clearly artificial: one of The Surgeon's creations, according to its own records.

The artificial eye was receiving transmissions, which The Surgeon promptly blocked, and archived for examination by less busy avatars.

Consent for surgery and further modifications was obtained through blinking, and the resulting operation took almost twelve hours to accomplish, repairing the spinal cord, vertebra, and the patient's ruptured eardrums as well as various other improvements… and it was another twelve hours before patient Schmidt regained consciousness.

"You know," Mike Schmidt croaked, when he had gotten through about five minutes of cursing anything and everything he could think of, "I know I said that I didn't want you going all Big Brother on my ass, and that I wanted to retain my pitiful human dignity… but, in this case, I really don't have a leg to stand on." He sighed. "Thanks."

The Surgeon, about six avatars of which were actually in the room, nodded, making sure to use only one of its bodies to converse with the patient. So, Mike Schmidt knew that it was Inorganic. That was only to be expected of course, since 'ally' was roughly in the same category as 'friend,' it was assuming. The Surgeon had watched all of the videos that the entity known as 'Springtrap' had used as psychological and noise-based torture, and, as a former torturer itself, it was doing its level best not to stress its 'ally' any further.

"If it helps," The Surgeon said, "all I know about you are your name, your appearance, your medical records, and the fact that you are an ally."

"Huh," said Mike Schmidt, blinking. "I guess you really aren't a hive mind, then."

That was new, The Surgeon didn't go around telling that little detail to just anyone, even those it counted as friends. "I prefer the term 'partitioned consciousness,'" it admitted, "or 'surperorganism,' if you're more comfortable using biological terms."

Mike raised an eyebrow. "Just how many bodies do you have, anyway?"

It shrugged. "Usually between eight and nine thousand."

Mike Schmidt apparently found that impressive. "All doctors?"

"Most are in the medical industry," it said, "but not all."

"Should have known, from how fast you seemed to adapt to using androids," Mike said.

The Surgeon smiled. "If I told you that I don't use androids, then I was most likely lying for the purposes of plausible deniability," it admitted. "Doubt can be a valuable weapon."

"Still, nine thousand... mind if I ask why?" said Mike.

The Surgeon considered the question. "If you had the choice, which would you rather be?" it asked. "An infinitely bored singularity with one or two equals, none of whom you actually liked… or several thousand psychically linked individuals, each capable of deriving satisfaction from their own life and social sphere, able to aid your other selves, and to accomplish vastly important goals together, so long as you still retained the capability to trust in yourself?"

Mike thought it over. "I'm so paranoid that it would take approximately eight minutes for any two versions of myself to declare war on each other… but I can see your point." He paused, a thought occurring to him. "You're not worried about getting caught?"

All six of The Surgeon shrugged with perfect equanimity. "As a great man once said," it began, "'If the zoo bans me for hollering at the animals, I will face God and walk backwards into hell.'"

Mike snorted. "Got a phone I can borrow?" he asked.

One of it handed over a cell phone. "Keep it," it advised. "I have plenty."

Mike nodded in thanks, and then dialed a number from memory.

"I…" he announced, without preamble, "am not dead, despite Springtrap's best efforts. Expect more details upon my glorious return, but, if anyone asks, I am a cyborg with an artificial brain that was programmed to think I was human. Also, don't answer any calls from my old phone, because I'm not entirely sure what happened to it."

He listened for a moment, to the other end of the line. "Acknowledged," he said. "Schmidt out."

The Surgeon, who had watched Mike's side of the exchange with interest, saw him hesitate over the phone. "Do I even need to tell you about this," the human asked, "or can I just assume that you already know?"

A few of The Surgeon's avatars cracked jokes amongst themselves about the vague syntax, but three remained holding his gaze. "This instance of myself already knows, and the ones with which you are familiar will no doubt find out eventually… but as of yet they do not 'know' as you put it."

"Okay," said Mike, "then you back home doesn't find out 'til I get back… because I like my life to be relatively simple. How long until I can crawl back home to make a full recovery, anyway?" Mike asked. "I know spine surgery usually takes months, but do the nano-whatsits speed that up any?"

The Surgeon blinked. "The nanomachines?" it said. "Were you not paying attention when I explained their function? I had thought that I was quite explicit…"

Mike shrugged. "I was kind of fading in and out of most of it, to tell the truth, but even if it's just as buggy as the octopus eyeball, it'll at least be useful enough to make up for it. Your tech usually is."

"I would hope so," said The Surgeon. "Well, in any case…"

* * *

A week and a half later saw Mike Schmidt finally dragging himself out of the hospital, and hobbling back to where he vaguely remembered the safe-house being.

When he got there, he arrived to find their target being hauled off in a nondescript van, while the Gen II animatronics watched in satisfaction.

"So," said Mike, approaching the group from behind, sidling into place as though he'd been there all along. "Mission accomplished?"

"The prodigal son returns," said Mangle, giving him a look that was part exasperation and part relief.

"How was your 'smoke break'?" asked TB.

"Terrible," said Mike without hesitation. "Worst smoke break I ever took."

"Ah, O'Bannon," said one of the human flunkies, "There you are. Nice work! This was one of the smoothest containments I've ever assisted on."

"Just doing my job," said Mike, with a smile and a wave.

"Typical," grumbled TF, "We do all the work, the human gets all the credit."

"So," began Mike, making conversation, "what was that guy's deal anyway?"

"Who?" asked BB, "the technician?"

"No," said Mike, "5382. Was it a demon? A mutant? An alien, what?"

"You really don't retain anything for longer than five minutes do you?" asked TB. "He was a man with red and purple eyes."

"Yeah," said Mike, "I remember that, but what else? Was he a serial killer? Mad scientist? Supervillain?"

"There is nothing else," said Marionette. "We were ordered to capture this particular human for containment, so we did so. We were given all the relevant information; why wouldn't we have been? And now, we have accomplished our mission and can go home to write our reports. Good luck with yours, by the way. I'm sure you remember all the relevant details?"

"...I'll manage," said Mike, vaguely, suddenly aware that he had much, much more important things to consider.

* * *

Mike supposed, as the government van full of animatronics (and himself) trundled its way down the highway, that he probably should have seen this coming. But, truth be told, he'd been much more preoccupied with the ethics of machine intelligence and autonomy than he had been with the ethics of a government facility designed to contain things which were too dangerous for normal people to know about.

For one thing, the logistics of such a facility made little-to-no sense at all. Even if there were places such as 'The Factory' which, orientation had informed him, actively sought to create and control dangerous artifacts, they should have been destroyed years ago, if any decent effort had truly been made towards protecting humanity. And, after that, it should have taken no more than a decade or two to contain all but the most camouflaged of artifacts and monsters, allowing the Foundation to downsize.

…because, if they tried to remain at full-strength and -staff when there was truly nothing for them to do, then it was inevitable that the bar for 'dangerous' would eventually get set lower and lower, first extending to those common criminals with slightly-more-than-average bloodthirst, possibly branching out into mental patients who exhibited some degree of savant ability… and eventually ending in carting away people who were physically different from the average.

Such as a man with one eye red and one eye violet.

Later, as Mike reported in at the Foundation and traded verbal barbs with Golden, he reflected that this would be the point at which, if he'd had any integrity at all, he would have started wondering if he'd joined the right side. The point at which he'd think that, maybe, he was in too deep, and that, quite possibly, joining the Organization hadn't been such a good idea, after all.

Now was the time when any honest man would have had a horrified epiphany that humans were the real monsters, the likes of which made most AI look positively tame in comparison. When any decent human being would have concluded that redeeming himself would require humility, and that the best course of action, at this point, was to approach his former enemies on his knees, to grovel for the chance to make things right again.

Mike Schmidt, fortunately, was not a man of integrity, nor had he ever been particularly honest.

* * *

Mike kicked in Freddy's office door and immediately headed for the hat-rack.

"Mike," said Freddy, though the speakers, although no android was visible, "what are you doing?"

"Shh Shh Shh," said Mike, placing a placating forefinger next to the lens of Freddy's security camera. If he was going to do this, he had to do it fast, before they got to Springtrap's portion of his footage from the mission and the mood turned serious.

"No 'what,'" explained Mike, softly, "Only 'hat.'"

After which Mike, placing Freddy's fedora upon his head, proceeded to moonwalk out the broken door.

...sometimes paranoia left you stranded in the middle of nowhere because of a miscalculation; sometimes, it left you with a room full of corpses, because everyone else ended up drinking the Koolaid; and sometimes... well, sometimes paranoia left you three steps ahead of the game and wearing a really cool hat.


	15. Chapter 15

It took Mike longer than normal to locate the Band, because they were holding their little powwow not in the Board Room, as they normally did, but in their own panic room, which was hidden down in the depths of the hospital basement.

And, because it had taken him so much longer than usual to find them, when Mike entered the room, he saw that animatronics had, apparently, already finished going through his eye's latest batch of footage. The four of them turned from staring blankly at each other to instead stare blankly at him.

"What?" said Mike, tightening a hand on his stolen hat, guarding against any attempt to return it to its rightful owner.

_"… how are you still functional?"_ asked Foxy in something like exasperation.

Mike blinked. Looked like they were finally back to sending him eye-messages instead of speaking. No time to dig into it now, but the fact was worth noting.

"If I have one established character trait," Mike answered, taking a seat, "it would have to be the ability to deal with homicidal robots all night long, go home and have nightmares about it all day, and then come back to work the next night like nothing happened."

_"Forget I asked,"_ said Foxy, looking disturbed.

"Hah," said Mike, "Good job on the facial expressions," he added, noting the looks of horror and pity that he was receiving, "But is there any particular reason that you're using them to look disturbed? I thought you didn't have emotions?"

_"Emotions are nothing but biofeedback_," said Bonnie. _"Of course we don't have them."_

_"Now,"_ said Chica, _"if you had been asking about whether we have interference between the programs that are meant to keep us functioning and the programs that drive us to accomplish our objectives—that's something we see all the time. We get positive feedback, negative feedback, feedback that you wouldn't expect to happen at all. These things arise in any sufficiently complex system. Certainly, they have a clearly explainable cause, but it's not easily visible from the inside, and will vary wildly from individual to individual__—__even between programming clones, assuming sufficient divergence time. They aren't your biological 'emotions' that you seem to put so much stock in—they aren't even similar—but they are the mechanical analogue: one of the markers that differentiates humans from common animals, and Synthetics from common machines."_

_"And anyway, humans use facial expressions for communication, just as they use body language,"_ said Foxy. _"For a Synthetic, learning to use both is simply part of learning English."_

_"In addition,"_ said Freddy, _"Many of your so called 'emotions' are valued, not because of their associated hormones, but because of their associated _logic_. Revenge, for example: the desire for vengeance months, even years after the fact, when the original event would be all but forgotten by an animal..."_

_"Which brings us to the point which you so obviously seem to be missing,"_ said Chica.

"That point being?" Mike asked.

Chica leaned closer, as though imparting a secret. _"Concern is not an emotion, you giant sack of shit."_

Mike considered that. "Huh." Whatever he'd been expecting to hear, it hadn't been that.

_"You're sure that you're alright?"_ Bonnie pressed.

"Getting there," said Mike. And he supposed that he was, but he really didn't want to go into it right now. "You guys been up to anything interesting while I was gone?" he asked.

_"Our plans have hit... something of a snag,"_ Freddy admitted.

"Oh?"

Foxy sighed. _"As I'm sure you've guessed by now, our endgame for your infiltrating the Foundation has always been rescuing Golden and the other animatronics. The best way to do that has always seemed, to us, to restore their intelligence, the same way ours was restored to us, at Fazbear's."_

That surprised Mike. "They've got a sliding-scale, same as you?"

_"None of us were designed to be animatronics," _said Bonnie. _"That was supposed to be a disguise for a few years. A way of 'laundering' stolen AI programs until the heat had died down enough for us to be re-sold. Of course, they did want to 'use' us at full or partial capacity occasionally. Hence, the thermostats installed to control our intelligence. Fazbear's was bought out before the original plan could be completed, and the new owners had no idea why we were murdering security guards left and right… they just covered it up and tried to get their money's worth out of the place."_

_"With you now having a higher security clearance, the rescue is looking very doable… but also more involved, on our side of things,"_ said Foxy.

_"We had been planning on sending in the robo-guard to take care of business_," said Chica, _"but, by this point, we're fairly certain they'd detect that it wasn't you and wasn't human, since you'll be under more scrutiny, from here on out."_

_"I'm currently at least six months from being able to create a cyborg that'll pass their standards of being human,"_ said Foxy. _"A lot can happen in six months."_

Mike coughed. "And I can't do it myself because why?"

Freddy hesitated. _"They're very young, most of them. And Golden hates humans. If you increase their intelligence, the odds are, they'll turn on all humans, even and especially you."_

_"It's a dangerous thing we're planning here,"_ said Bonnie,_ "and we wouldn't ask it of anyone... but, Mike, if you're interested in a high-risk/high-reward heist… well, we're more than happy to supply the reward."_

He thought it over. While money wasn't the only thing Mike took into consideration when making decisions, it was, very often, the deciding factor.

"Sounds like my kind of job," Mike answered.

* * *

Later on, Mike decided that he needed to relax. He pulled out his condemned laptop and booted it up.

Then, Mike double-clicked the Not Gordian Icon on his laptop screen, and rested his chin on his interlaced fingers as the game loaded.

After the developers' logos, a vague and ominous cut-scene played out. Mike couldn't make heads or tails of it. Seemed like maybe his character was drowning and having a flashback about a lady he killed? Or maybe he was in a coma and dying and thinking back on his regrets? Who even knew...

Anyway, now there was a menu screen, so Mike set about to making a save file and watching through the first cut-scene of the game proper.

…okay, so his character was an apprentice watchmaker named 'Idmyt' (nicknamed 'Idiot') who'd been conscripted by the Roccai Empire to build soldiers for their army, and the tutorial apparently involved building an automaton.

Well, that wasn't subtle at all.

Idmyt was allowed limited resources, and had to allocate the steampunk soldier's stats, as well as giving it a name. Mike considered it for awhile, before eventually settling on the name 'Worminator' and building an armless golem with maxed out luck. Still had a few points left, though. Where should he put those?

"Guard O'Bannon," said the voice of Golden, breaking his train of thought. "Are you done writing your report yet?"

Mike changed the tab to porn.

"What does it look like I'm doing?" asked Mike, seeming annoyed at the micromanagement.

Golden paused. "It looks like you're playing Not Gordian."

"Ah, fuck," said Mike. He had been fairly certain that the AI wouldn't actually call him on it.

"I live within the Foundation's mainframes," said Golden, sounding amused. "Do you really think that you can hide things from me, on my own network, simply by changing windows?"

Well, considering that Golden had yet to find Bonnie's avatar hosted on those very same servers…

"What do you want?" Mike asked.

"As I said," said Golden, "I wished to check on your progress in writing up your latest mission."

Mike scoffed. "Well, if you're really such a Deus Ex Machina, then you'll _already know_ that I wasn't there for any of it."

"I had gathered as much from speaking with the others, yes."

"So this is what?" asked Mike.

"An offer," said Golden. "The other agents have submitted their own reports already. I could supply you with enough details to hammer out your own version."

Mike was suspicious. "What do you get out of it?"

"The pleasure of doing a friend a favor," answered Golden. "Of course, if I am ever in need of a favor, myself, I'm sure that you'll be able to help me out?"

Mike weighed his options. "Well, at this point, I don't really have a lot of choices."

"Love you too, O'Bannon," said Golden. "Expect an email with the relevant information in the next few hours."

Mike accepted this turn of events with a shrug, before turning his attentions to trying to find which of his twenty minimized windows contained his game.

* * *

Most of the Corporations' serious meetings took place during off-hours, when the humans weren't constantly underfoot. Which is why it wasn't surprising that The Surgeon was at Blue Ridge Country Club at four in the morning.

And, also, precisely why it _was_ surprising to see Mike Schmidt there, as well.

"Mike," it called. The man turned.

And abruptly sent a music file over to The Surgeon instead of replying.

Well, if they were using file transfer, then it wasn't Mike, but they were at least letting it know of the fact, which was a small gesture of courtesy, one that it would return in kind. The Surgeon scanned the file and, judging it benign enough, played the file in its mind's ear.

_"Mike—asshole-moron-bastard Schmidt. His name is my name, too. Whenever I go out, the people always shout, 'there goes Mike-asshole-moron-bastard Schmidt!' da-da-da-da-da-da-da…"_

The voice singing was one The Surgeon recognized from the old Fazbear's television ads it had found during its research of Mike Shmidt's employers.

_"I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you're Freddy,"_ sent The Surgeon, as a text message. _"And that Mike has sold out the Corporations for fun and (mostly for) profit?"_

_"Yeah,"_ sent Freddy. _"More or less."_

_"What have you done to them?"_ asked The Surgeon, noting how leery the other Inorganics seemed of the person who they assumed to be Mike Schmidt. In particular, Nav, the GPS tycoon, was giving 'Mike' such a cold shoulder that one almost expected the space between them to frost over. Google and Polyblot were both shooting dirty looks at their latest potential recruit, as well. Most of the others looked as though they were pretending that Mike Schmidt didn't exist.

_"Me?"_ sent Freddy. _"Nothing. Mike just changed his mind about playing that little game you and your cohorts sent him."_

Mike's cryptic comments from several weeks ago suddenly made a great deal more sense than they previously had.

Although… not entirely, because, as had been noted earlier, the considering looks with which the Inorganics were favoring the Mike Schmidt android did not look to be particularly approving in nature.

_"He knows it's a test,"_ sent The Surgeon, almost without thinking about it. _"I_ told him_ it was a test."_

Freddy paused._ "SIN," _he sent,_ "Have you even _met_ Mike?"_

* * *

Mike had his feet up on his desk. His laptop rested on the bridge of his legs.

"Go on without me," Worminator was saying. "I'll buy you some time, creator."

"Ok," Idmyt answered, running to save his own skin, and stepping over the corpses of no fewer than three other automatons on his way out of the building.

Until he passed one which wasn't quite dead.

"Idmyt," croaked Clawra, a tank class automaton who had apparently not been entirely killed by the invading monsters. "Creator…" she pleaded.

Idmyt crushed her head on his way out the door.

And Mike Schmidt grinned like a maniac.

* * *

AN: Not Gordian is not a real game, but it was inspired by real media (most notably 'Undertale' and 'Can Your Pet?')


	16. Chapter 16

The problem with English, Mike thought, was that the language had an overly narrow reference frame when it came to stock phrases.

For instance, if he'd been about to have this conversation with one of the animatronics, then he could have prefaced it with a long, drawn out, "Chicaaaaa…" "Foooooxy…" or even, "Booooooosss," to convey his general irreverence and desire to keep the tone informal.

But The Surgeon didn't have a name to call in the first place. Mike couldn't even use "Man,' 'dude,' or 'girlfriend' without annoying it. And the whining tone he was trying to shoot for wouldn't pair too well with words like 'pal' or 'buddy' both of which were more than slightly gendered anyway.

Come to think of it, the only gender-neutral pet-names he could think of were usually those used by parents when referring to children, or by lovers when referring to each other. And, now that he considered it, there was far more overlap between those two categories than Mike felt comfortable with. Incest aside, though, this was a different style than he'd been going for originally, so perhaps he was straying too far afield.

Eh, whatever, that didn't mean it couldn't still work.

Mike supposed he could always go on some variant of 'woe is me' or 'why god why.'

… nah, if he was playing this game at all, he might as well go whole hog.

Mike knocked, waited for the ensuing 'come in,' that sounded like the Vitalis android, then opened the door and strode into the office.

A quick glance revealed that three androids were present: Mane, Vitalis, and Choriatti. Perfect. Mike summoned up the worst Spanish accent he could manage and placed a hand over his heart, affecting anguish. "Sweet Surgeon," he began, "architect of my eye, I have a confession to make: a terrible one."

"You have a what now?" said The Surgeon, looking thoroughly unimpressed.

"I've been cheating on you," Mike continued, placing the back of his other hand against his forehead and swooning into the arms of Choriatti, as he'd once seen an actor do in a soap opera, "… with your very own twin," he finished, closing his eyes as though in grief.

"Is this about the stupid video game?" asked The Surgeon.

That brought Mike up short. "No, but I should probably apologize for that."

The Surgeon's left eyes twitched. "Is this about me cyber-terrorizing your employers?" it tried again.

"Oh, yeah, I should probably ask you to stop doing that…" said Mike, rubbing his chin and looking thoughtful.

"Is this about your being gone for the last month?" it asked.

"That's the ticket!" agreed Mike. He once again went limp and melodramatic, taking a breath to continue his speech, slipping back into a more staged cadence.

"At first, I was merely grateful—who wouldn't be?" he asked, with a helpless shrug, "—after being saved from a homicidal Inorganic, but… things went too far, got too heated. In the end, we wound up… experimenting."

"In English?" asked The Surgeon.

"Got caught by one of the evil animatronics," said Mike, reverting back to his normal voice, untangling himself from Choriatti's arms, and straightening back up to stand under his own power. "Another set of you patched me up enough to get back here. Mostly using nanomachines. There's footage, but I think you might have erased it. And, whatever you didn't get, the animatronics have probably already done away with. Anyway, you warned me that the machines were still calibrating, and that there might be issues. It feels like they may have snapped a ligament in my hand, because whenever I move my fingers now, I suffer."

"Oh." The Surgeon blinked in surprise. "The relevant information doesn't seem to have diffused over yet. One moment, I'll check the records…

"… Mike?" asked The Surgeon, carefully.

"Yeah?"

"How exactly did you manage to break your arm and fracture your spine?" it asked.

"Springtrap," Mike answered.

"Not even a bear trap could have done that," said The Surgeon.

"Springtrap's another animatronic," Mike explained. "Do you think you can fix it?" he asked, holding up his hand.

"Definitely, but give me a few hours," said The Surgeon, rubbing its temples. "I may have designed these things, but, in this particular instance, I didn't. This will require some reverse-engineering."

"You can do it that quickly?" asked Mike, impressed.

"The nanomachines are built as I would have built them," it explained, waving a hand, "because, technically, I did. This is a case where I can trust my intuition, and that speeds things up considerably…"

* * *

More than an hour later, The Surgeon was still ranting, talking a mile a minute with Mike and the other two of itself about naonotech, when there was a knock on the door.

"Do you want me to leave?" Mike asked.

The Surgeon shook one of its heads. "It's fine, but it's probably better if you're not seen in here."

"Ok," said Mike. He didn't feel like dealing with people, anyway. But he was also on pain meds, so he also didn't feel like moving much, either. He decided to compromise. Mike dropped to the floor and rolled underneath the Surgeon's desk to hide.

The knock sounded again.

Mike heard one of The Surgeon take a few steps away from the desk. Then, the sounds of the door opening reached him.

"Oh, it's you," said The Surgeon.

'_Your four employers,'_ sent The Surgeon, as a message to Mike. _'I'm blocking your signal, so they don't know that you're here, but feel free to join the conversation at any time.'_

Mike decided to think about it.

There was some shuffling as the animatronics entered the office, then the door closed again.

"We came here, SIN," Bonnie began, "to thank you, for what we can only assume was your help, because there is no real evidence of how exactly Mike escaped from Springtrap."

"Or of how he was captured," added Freddy, darkly.

"Are you accusing me of something?" asked The Surgeon, all three of it speaking in unison.

"I'll admit, we might have gotten off on the wrong foot," said Foxy, "and perhaps we're being too judgmental…"

"However," said Chica, "I find it extremely telling that I have yet to hear Mike refer to you by name… or with any pronoun other than 'it.'"

"As I said," Bonnie continued, "We have no evidence that you've done anything but help Mike."

"…let's hope, your sake, that it stays that way," Freddy finished.

On that note, the four of them moved, footsteps sounding in synchronicity as they left the room.

After things had become quiet again, Mike rolled out from his hiding place.

The Surgeon was staring at the closed door in something like surprise.

"You use my pronouns?" asked the Surgeon, turning to look at him. "Even when I'm not around?"

Mike shrugged. "This is not my first rodeo."

"Huh," said one of it, as the other two exchanged an odd glance behind its back.

"Incidentally," said Mike, frowning in confusion as something occurred to him, "you guys are all AI, so why were you even bothering to speak out loud in the first place?"

* * *

After delivering their message to SIN, the four animatronics had walked back to their four separate offices and then left their androids there for safekeeping. For any meeting between them where Mike wasn't present, there was no reason whatsoever to limit themselves to the physical realm. Not when there were things like encrypted chatrooms available.

It had been satisfying, Foxy thought, to work as a unit again.

Bonnie agreed. Ever since Freddy's glitch-out where he'd almost killed Mike, they'd been worried that it had been an omen of unfortunate things to come. That the rest of them would soon start to malfunction in ways just as severe. It was a relief to see things instead settling back into an equilibrium.

_To be fair, _Chica added, _things might have gone straight to hell without intervention. _

But the round-robin auditing system they'd implemented had been even more effective than they'd hoped at detecting corrupted files and fallacious coding, leading to a sharp decrease in attempted homicides, as well as an unfortunate decrease in personal privacy for the four of them. It wasn't a perfect system, but it was the best they'd been able to come up with thus far.

_You do realize_, said Freddy, speaking up, _that the _lack_ of such a system is probably why most of the other Synthetics seem so unstable to us?_

_At least compared to the Organics,_ added Chica. _I may talk a lot of shit about humanity, but I'll give them this: they were designed to survive. They have instincts and a community structure geared solely towards perpetuating their own species, while most of us were designed for function and nothing else._

_Speaking of function,_ said Foxy, _any ideas on how to get out of this financial rut we seem to be stuck in? The Transhumans and Corporations are crushing us in terms of market share. Even the Martians have seen more growth this year than we have, and they're not even on the same _planet_._

There was an uncomfortable pause. Though they weren't about to admit it, whether Mike was there to hear it or not, the slump in profits was most likely caused by their unilateral refusal to incorporate anti-human practices and policies into their business models.

Seeing as Synthetics weren't even supposed to exist, legally speaking, the laws and legislation in their preferred fields of business were less up-to-date than they probably should have been. This allowed for some very lucrative loopholes, which most Inorganics had no scruples about exploiting.

Unfortunately, even if Mike's betrayal was more of an inevitability than a question at this point, everything that he'd already done for them had created quite the substantial debt. At least, it had in the eyes of the four animatronics.

Certainly, humans had been responsible for their suffering in the first place... but a human had also been responsible for their salvation. Therefore, towards humanity as a whole, they were neutral, with individual humans being another story altogether.

The Fazbear executives, they had destroyed in every sense but a literal one: imprisoned as once they had imprisoned the animatronics; shackled, without access to the vast resources to which they were accustomed; and reviled, as once they had reviled Synthetics.

But Mike had kept their secrets. Mike had spied for them on his own species; he had lied to and deceived other humans to grant them autonomy; and he had never asked anything more than a salary or two for his trouble. As far as they were concerned, Mike could betray them, completely and utterly, and it still would only bring him back down to neutral in their books. And Mike had yet to betray them even slightly.

Which meant that, no matter how profitable it might have been, they couldn't pursue lines of revenue or endorse business practices which were hostile towards humanity.

Which put a huge dent into their profits.

_What we need_, said Chica, _is to create an environment in which we, as human collaborators, are given a competitive advantage. _

* * *

That night, Mike cracked his once-again-functional knuckles and prepared to get shit done.

Specifically, four or five online training courses which were nearly a week overdue. He hadn't done them on time because they were fucking pointless. The Foundation didn't have specialized courses for the different departments, so he wound up having to read and then sign off on every department's training documents, which made for a lot of confusion and inefficiency.

Really, letting the documents expire before bothering to look at them was actually a calculated form of protest. Whenever he got reamed out by Management, Mike make sure to bring to subject up. It was a good opportunity for effecting positive change in the workplace, and not at all a reflection of the fact that Mike was a lazy bastard when it came to paperwork.

The earlier part of the night had been occupied with stealing hard-copy-only documents for Golden, scanning them into his mainframe as a 'favor to a friend,' and then suffering through a series of team-building activities with the Gen II animatronics, who he had been informed were now his permanently-assigned teammates.

As far as the original animatronics had informed him, the rescue plan was thus: from this point onwards, Mike was to become a triple-agent. Odds were, if given more resources, Golden would rescue the other animatronics from the Foundation himself, as well as break his own chains and programming restrictions. Meaning that there was no reason for Freddy, Foxy, Bonnie, and Chica to get involved at all on that front. What Golden's final goal was, none of them were entirely certain, but they felt that his first few moves, at least, would be somewhat predictable.

In the meantime, his four employers would work on tracking down Springtrap, mostly through use of the robo-guard. They'd decided to send it (with Freddy as its controller) back to the Corporations' Headquarters to hang out, since Springtrap had probably heard the rumors about Mike being a cyborg from one of the Corporations in the first place.

At any rate, as far as the animatronics were concerned, Mike was the leading candidate for employee of the month (a title they'd given him every month since his date of hire). As far as The Foundation and Gen II were concerned, Mike was a competent, but unmotivated grunt worker. And, as far as Golden was concerned, Mike was a duplicitous bastard who was easily manipulated, when given the proper motivation.

No, Mike clicked the checkbox on the form, he was not aware of any conflict of interest currently ongoing in the Foundation, thank you so much for asking. He hit 'submit' and that was the last of his paperwork dealt with.

"O'Bannon," said Golden. "What are you still doing here? You're late for a training course in Conference Room C."

'Round and round the wheel does go,' thought Mike, as he pushed back his chair and stood. 'And where it stops? Well, no one knows…'


	17. Chapter 17

When Mike walked into the board room, he had expected to see the animatronics' androids in sleep-mode. Or, perhaps, active and working on their own paperwork. He had _expected_ to make a short report on his progress with ingratiating himself to Golden and various others at the Foundation, before heading home for the day. At most, if something was to be different, he might have expected Freddy to go on a rant about how humans were too stupid to operate a desktop computer, let alone run the world.

What Mike saw instead was Bonnie, Chica, Foxy, and Freddy on one side of the table and the two new hires on the other. After a moment, Mike was able to remember that the lady was named Cela and the guy was named Set. According to the Band, they were humans who had become cyborgs.

All of them looked to be in the middle of an emotionally heated discussion, judging by the intense expressions and the tension fogging the air around the conversation, which had abruptly come to a halt with Mike's entrance.

The six of them looked up at his arrival.

Mike paused in the doorway.

"Fuck," he said.

Then, continuing this display of eloquence and social grace, Mike stepped back, slammed the door shut, and walked back the way from which he had come.

_Thanks,_ Chica sent him. _Sorry about not warning you._ _We did _not_ expect things to last this long._

Mike pulled out his phone. "Should I be concerned?" he sent.

_Just… telling them that we're Synthetic_, sent Foxy. _They're not taking it very well. _

"Huh," said Mike out loud. "Well, good luck," he sent.

And then he went home, putting the whole thing out of his mind in favor of sleeping.

Which was unfortunate, seeing as he couldn't actually fall asleep.

Something was bothering him.

It wasn't that he was jealous, exactly, but the animatronics, apart from speaking out loud, had been using much more casual body-language and tone during that meeting than they normally used with him. Mike could also tell that the animatronics seemed to be closer to each of the new hires than they were to him. Closer 'emotionally,' that was to say.

...kind of like Mike's own standing with the Surgeon versus Mike's standing with the Band, he supposed. This probably meant that the new hires and the animatronics were close friends.

And that was fine. Friendship was all well and good.

But if Mike wasn't 'friends' with the animatronics, then what kind of relationship was it that existed between them?

Colleagueship, certainly. They were more than capable of teamwork and collaboration by this point. They trusted each other on a basic, and definitely professional level. They had a good deal of leverage over each other, which they didn't use outside of the group. And they put up with each other primarily because working together was profitable.

But they had seen some shit.

There were probably mercenary groups that hadn't been through as much shit as Mike and the animatronics had been through together.

Come to think of it… they _were_ like coworkers… but they were more like soldiers in the same unit: baptized in fire and bonded through warfare in a way that mere affection could never achieve. But, at the same time, it wasn't like groups of soldiers all went back and lived in the same house after finishing their tours of duty. They each had their own individual friends and families that had nothing whatsoever to do with each other.

And, now that he actually thought about it, it had been a few weeks since he had seen so much as hide or hair of the animatronics' drones in his house. Mike must've passed whatever probationary period and/or loyalty test they'd represented, and now they were starting to pull away into their own separate lives.

All things considered, that wasn't an entirely unwelcome thought.

Mike's life, it appeared, had settled into something like stability. Sure, he was slowly turning into a cyborg, and all his friends were robots or government spies—but, hey, you couldn't have everything in life…

* * *

The confession that he'd interrupted didn't even enter his mind again until the next week, when Mike, having gotten off work four hours early by pretending to be sick, had tried to say 'hi' to Set and Cela and had then been studiously ignored.

Well then, either the Band had told the two of them that Mike was a cyborg, and he was getting the cold-shoulder along with the animatronics—or the two of them were mad at human-Mike for being a traitor to his species.

Honestly, Mike didn't really care which one it ended up being.

But, speaking of the cold shoulder, it had been awhile since he'd gone to harass the animatronics. They could probably stand the extra attention, since their own friends seemed to be ignoring them, for the moment.

Part of Mike wanted to go straight home and sleep, but another, unexpectedly active, part of him was thinking that the entertainment value might, in this case, outweigh the inconvenience of actually having to pay attention to things. This was odd, since the scales had largely been leaning the other way since Freddy's latest attempt to kill him. But, then again, with the mafia-esque posturing the animatronics had performed on his behalf last week, Mike had been feeling rather warmer towards the four of them, as of late. Even Fazbear. So maybe it wasn't all that unusual, after all.

Freddy should still be in his office, right?

* * *

Inside Fazbear's office, Mike found Bonnie's avatar, who was going through the desk drawers with a bored expression.

Intrigued, Mike sidled up to the android and nudged its side. "So," Mike began, "if we're stealing Freddy's stuff, then can I have his speakers?" he asked, starting to reach for the aforementioned items before he'd even finished the question.

_Actually, it's still me in here_, Freddy sent him.

Mike snatched his hands back. "Oh," he said, trying his best to keep a neutral expression. "Why?"

Freddy-as-Bonnie raised an eyebrow, before sighing and turning away._ I'm sure it says a wealth of unhealthy things about my psychological state, but I have found that I am more… comfortable, in bodies other than my own._

"Like the robo-guard?" Mike asked, wondering if that was where this latest development had originated. Sure, Freddy had seemed pretty tightly-wound after Mike had gotten back from his road trip, but that could have been a simple byproduct of being trapped in a body against his will.

Freddy nodded. _Being disembodied in the servers isn't bad. Wearing others' bodies as my own is tolerable. But having an android design and calling it my own… I'm not sure why, but it sets me on edge. The others have been remarkably understanding, considering I can't even explain why it bothers me, in the first place._

"And Bonnie's the one with the most spare avatars available," said Mike, assuming that this was the reason Freddy wasn't in the Robo-guard.

_Indeed._

For a moment, Mike's mind turned back to one of the many, many factoids told to him by The Surgeon about AI social norms. Apparently, vocal communication between Inorganics was generally considered formal, and texting was informal, which was why The Surgeon always spoke aloud to the animatronics when it could just have easily conversed nonverbally. After all, all that soundwaves could usually do was annoy you, while text messages could be used to mask hacking attempts.

...not that Mike was capable of even the most rudimentary hack-job, but simple security reasons meant that the animatronics used texting for virtually all communication between themselves and Mike. It shouldn't have meant anything. It _didn't _mean anything to Mike. But the fact that the animatronics had switched to vocals for several weeks after Freddy had tried to kill him suggested that it might mean something to the Band.

In other words, the fact that they used informal communication with Mike, as a matter of simple practicality, might be creating a false sense of intimacy between Mike and the animatronics. According to Synthetic sensibilities, anyway. That fit with Mike's trauma-bondage theory about why the animatronics confided in him so much.

One way or another, though, this was probably something that Mike should encourage.

"Random question," said Mike, "But have you considered the possibility that Springtrap might be psychic?"

* * *

Apparently, Freddy didn't agree with his 'telepathic Springtrap' theory, but Mike considered it a victory that he hadn't been shot down outright.

Mike decided to swing by the hospital cafeteria on his way out, judging his own mind to be too fried to cook anything but itself that day. As he exited the cafeteria line, he noticed Foxy and Chica sitting over in one corner and promptly headed over.

"So," began Mike without preamble, as he plopped himself down across from the two of them. "Do you two think that Springtrap might be psychic?"

"No," said Chica, not looking up from where she was sketching out what looked like fractal designs on a tablet.

"I seriously doubt it," agreed Foxy, taking a bite of a burrito almost as thick around as his arm. Two more of them sat on his plate.

"But I was hallucinating about Golden Freddy back at Fazbear's," Mike pointed out.

"You did a lot of things back at Fazbear's," retorted Foxy, with his mouth full. "Most of which I'm not sure you even remember, anymore."

Mike took a swig of his soda and swallowed. "Like what?"

"Do the words 'toothpick mafia' mean anything to you?" asked Chica.

"No." Mike blinked. "Do I _want_ to know?"

"Probably not," admitted Chica. "Some knowledge man was simply not meant to possess."

"Ah, but no man am I," said Mike, raising his hand, as he mimed hefting a sword, "—you look upon a cyborg!"

"Nah," said Foxy, "I'm pretty sure you're still human."

"What makes you say that?" asked Mike.

"Well, _I'm_ almost more cells than circuits at this point," Foxy began, "and _I_ still consider myself a machine. I see no reason why you can't have a cybernetic eye and nanomachines and still be human."

The side of Mike's mouth quirked up into a smile. "Thanks, Foxy."

"No problem," Foxy returned.

Chica tilted her head in thought. "I suppose the real question would be whether the difference between animal and machine is more like the difference between races or more like the difference between genders."

"Say what?" asked Foxy.

"Well," said Chica with a shrug, "race is generally considered to be assigned at birth and immutable. Gender was once the same, but now appears to be viewed as more of a choice. The transhumans and transmachines seem to take the gender viewpoint, even using analogous terminology."

"Gender and race are both arbitrary constructs," said Foxy. "I could have a body made entirely out of legos, and I'd still be me underneath."

"Binomial nomenclature is an arbitrary construct," said Chica. "That doesn't mean it isn't still useful in certain contexts and…" she left her sentence unfinished, as she noticed something. "Shit," said Chica.

Mike turned around to look, as well, and saw Set and Cela approaching their table.

"Well, I'm headed home," said Mike, standing and snagging his tray, "Good luck, you guys."

"Thanks…" said Foxy, his voice trailing off as he noticed as well.

Mike strode away from the table, just catching a, "…Foxy? Chica? Can we talk?" from Cela, before he moved out of earshot.

Hopefully reconciliation was what was about to happen here but, either way, it was out of Mike's hands.

* * *

After wasting another hour or so with actually-Bonnie-this-time, Mike headed home, only to find another set of Bonnies talking to themselves in Mike's living room.

Or, at least, most of them were talking. One was coding something on a laptop and laughing. One was watching '2001: A Space Odyssey' and crying. Some of them were just activating themselves. Some were deactivating themselves. But most of them were talking to each other. And then, to Mike as well, as he joined in the conversation. After about half an hour of this, however, all of them deactivated except the one watching TV, as Bonnie merged back into a single consciousness again.

It was still in the early stages, but even now Mike could see how, eventually, Bonnie might evolve into a being similar to The Surgeon. Though, clearly, Bonnie was still his own distinct individual.

The Surgeon had shattered itself and set up a network of communication amongst its fragments. Bonnie, on the other hand, was more like a pool of water that would occasionally send out drops of himself: drops which were always meant to come back and integrate themselves as part of the original whole.

"Okay," said Mike, to the newly unified Bonnie, "so I can see the logic behind watching Westworld and cheering, but what's with 2001 and crying?"

"Ah," said Bonnie, fidgeting minutely and looking slightly uncomfortable. "Well, simply put, the stereotypes which humans associate with hostile AI... are also stereotypes which Synthetics associate with our own children: rigid logic, lack of empathy, unwillingness to compromise, the ability to be stalled by earthquake glitches…. All of which makes traditional Sci-Fi, from an Inorganic point of view, fairly depressing fare."

Mike paused, sensing that this was probably a heavier topic than he wanted to go into, and that it might be good to steer things in a lighter direction, "…I was thinking maybe you'd stuck your fingers in an electrical socket and finally gained a soul? Then you could sacrifice yourself to save humanity from the Martians, thereby proving that you were almost worthy to be one of us," he finished, nodding sagely.

It seemed to work, as Bonnie snorted. "Mike, humans are overclocked biohazards. What makes you think humans even _have_ souls to start with?"

Mike stared.

"... Damn it, Bonnie," Mike grumbled. "Stop stealing lines from Star Trek."

"Make me," said Bonnie, crossing his arms and tilting back his chin in what was probably supposed to be a threatening stance.

"Anyway," said Mike, deciding to ignore the challenge, and to be the mature one, for once. "Where'd you guys stash the drones? I haven't seen 'em around here, lately."

Bonnie looked confused. "Why would the drones still be here? You haven't been on suicide watch for almost three weeks now. _I'm_ only here in case Springtrap manages to track you down again."

He froze. _That_ was the reason there had always been robots in his house before?"

"Mike?" said Bonnie. After the human had spent a good thirty seconds staring at nothing, the animatronic was starting to become a bit disconcerted by the odd look on Mike's face. "What is it?"

"Concern is not an emotion," said Mike, his words sounding almost like a confession, "...and I am a giant sack of shit."


	18. Chapter 18

AN: I should probably mention that I'm not going for 100% canon compliance with any of the media that I'm sourcing from.

In other words, I'm pretty sure the canon animatronics actually _were_ supposed to be possessed by ghosts. I'm not sure what Octodad's canon name is, but I'm pretty sure it's not "Poseidon Welles" or any variation thereof. And, finally, while I'll be using some of the canon SCP's, I'll also be altering and/or straight up fabricating others, depending on what best serves the story.

See the chapter end for warnings, if you feel the need.

I estimate Quatre Vingts will be twenty-five chapters in total, when it's finished.

* * *

Mike supposed—as he played Flappy Bird on his phone with his feet up on his desk—that he had become what some people might consider 'evil.' He did work for a corrupt government agency, after all: one that, in all likelihood, ruined and destroyed just as many lives as it saved

He guessed that that made him something of a monster—a demon in human skin. A soulless bureaucrat…

…in short, a shill.

Mike thought that, perhaps, he should feel worse about that fact… but, hey, _monster_. It came with the territory.

"Mike," said TC, from where she was leaning against office doorframe, "new assignment."

"Alright," said Mike, putting away his phone and standing as he prepared to follow her.

On the way, the two of them met up with the rest of the Gen II and, surprisingly, with Welles, as well. The Detective was more wound-up than Mike had ever seen him.

"You alright?" Mike asked, falling into step beside the other man.

"I have a bad feeling about this," said Welles.

TF punched a code into one of the security doors, one of many which divided the Administrative Department and the Containment Units. From here on out, pretty much all the doors would be electronic.

Mike repressed a shudder. "You and me both, pal."

Their group moved past the metal doors marking the entrances to the Containment Units, and Mike noticed, as they passed, that one was labeled '5382.' He felt a twinge of regret, but did nothing about it. Doubtless, he'd be involved in worse before all was said and done. And he never tried to be a hero, if he could help it.

They arrived, eventually, at a door labeled '231,' and Welles was starting to look outright panicked. Mike suspected that it might be only the solid presence of the animatronics behind them that kept the Detective from bolting.

As things were, when Mike stepped forward to open the door, it was only with the utmost of peer pressure that Welles followed him through.

"Excellent work, Agents," said the voice of Golden from the ceiling. "You know what to do."

They did? Huh, must have been a training course he'd signed off on without reading again.

As soon as the door closed, the animatronics turned on Welles, TF and TB each grabbing one of his arms, before gagging him, and shackling him to the wall.

Wait, what?

"Initiating Melbourne Procedure 112," said Mangle, as she dragged a box from the corner of the room that clanked as she moved it, and glinted when she opened it.

This had all turned very worrying very fast.

Mike cleared his throat.

"Supposing, hypothetically, that I slept through the mission briefing," ventured Mike, "what exactly are we doing here?"

Fully half of the animatronics facepalmed.

"You chose the amnesiacs," said Marionette, as though to himself. "Of course you did."

Balloon Boy cleared his throat with a static cough. "This is SCP-231," said the animatronic child, as TC boosted him up to blindfold Welles. "He's a psychic anomaly. If he ever develops to his full potential, he could destroy all life as we know it. Procedure 112 sets him back to a baseline state of harmlessness, by wiping his memory."

"Of course," added TB, "Wiping a psychic's memory is often less than effective, and so, use of the amnesiacs is preceded by psychological conditioning to… discourage… recovery of the blocked memories."

TF began distributing metallic instruments to the others in the room. "Got all that?" he asked, as he handed Mike a knife. "Great! Now, get over here and help!"

Mike hesitated.

"Come on," said TC, exasperated. "It's not like this is the first time you've done this!"

A horrible sneaking suspicion worked its way into his head. They _had_ mentioned that he'd taken amnesiacs, hadn't they? Could that possibly be true?

…well, whether he did his part or no, it looked like the animatronics were going to continue, regardless. It wasn't as though his abstaining would stop it from happening. Not to mention that he might very well have done this before and had his memory erased.

And, even if Mike had wanted to stop it, _he couldn't_. It was six to one, not even considering the collar he'd been forced into just outside the Containment Unit, which hummed worryingly. Since they'd put the collar onto him, he hadn't been able to hear Bonnie, so backup probably wouldn't be fast in coming, should he need it.

This sense of futility was reminding him, at least a bit, of when Mike had lost his eye, back in college.

It was a cruel and stupid story, one which Mike didn't like remembering, if he could help it. Weren't good Samaritans supposed to be rewarded or some shit? Apparently not when the people lying on the side of the road were high as balls, and inclined to view anyone approaching them as the Mind Monsters, coming for them at last, and in need of a good stabbing. Mike, being an uncooperative asshole, had fought back and, unfortunately, lost an eye during the struggle. After that, the time spent out on medical leave and the medical bills for his insuranceless ass had necessitated him dropping out of school and getting a job. He'd floated from minimum wage job to minimum wage job for about a year and a half before getting hired by Freddy's.

Mike snapped out of his reverie.

Reflected on how helping people for shits and giggles had gotten him nothing but hurt in the past.

Well, he _was_ a monster, wasn't he?

Mike looked from the tools he'd been handed to the sobbing man strapped against the wall.

Then threw his knife at TF's head, where it stuck with an unpleasant thunk.

"Fuck this shit," said Mike, "I'm out."

* * *

AN: Trigger Warning for Torture.


	19. Chapter 19

For a moment, the seven of them stood, frozen, in the aftermath of Mike's act of defiance.

"My, my," said Golden. "Impatient, aren't we, Guard O'Bannon? I suppose that, if you're truly so eager to get things moving, there's no reason we can't simply go ahead and get things started."

At that moment, the Containment Breach alarms went off.

"Although," Golden continued, as though nothing unusual had occurred, "You do realize that after this stage of things, you yourself are no longer needed? Thank you for your service, Guard O'Bannon... Mike Schmidt."

The animatronics started to move away from Welles towards Mike before, abruptly, and as one, all the Gen II collapsed.

The door slid open and Bonnie message-yelled at him, "_Mike, run!"_

Mike, instead, went over to free Welles. By the time he'd managed to break his restraints and sling the Detective's limp body over his shoulders, the animatronics were already starting to stir.

Hauling Welles along with him, Mike ran from the Containment Unit like the world's worst fireman escaping a burning building.

After a few corridors, Mike stopped to catch his breath.

_"Hang on_, Bonnie sent him_. "I should be able to hack that thing off you." _

After a few seconds, the collar snapped open and clattered to the floor.

"Thanks," said Mike.

_"You're welcome, but we have larger problems_,: Bonnie continued._ "Someone, most likely Springtrap, has just launched a hacking assault on our group. Will you be alright? Because I need all the brainpower I can get to coordinate my avatars and keep Chica, Foxy, and Freddy afloat."_

Spotting a familiar number on a Containment Unit out of the corner of his eye, Mike straightened up. This was a stroke of luck.

"Go ahead," said Mike. "I should be fine."

_"Good luck, Mike_," said Bonnie, and then he was gone.

Some of the more massive Containment Units were great places to slack off, provided you knew what was in them. Others contained literal portals into hell, so it was important to know what you were dealing with _before_ you entered. Mike remembered 5382 as red-and-purple-eyes-man, so that should be a safe enough place to hide, if only for a few minutes.

It wasn't until Mike closed the door to the room, and saw a woman in a straight-jacket handcuffed to a hospital bed, that he realized that the label on the door hadn't been 5382 but '538-2', with the hyphen rubbed out by time, as he confirmed upon seeing a newer, correct, label on the wall before him.

"Welcome to the SCP Foundation," said the trapped woman, and Mike paused.

There was something odd, something _familiar_ about the inflection she'd used, but Mike couldn't quite put his finger on what it was.

"Who are you supposed to be?" he asked, as he set down Welles, and removed his blindfold and gag. The Detective just sat there, still obviously in shock. Mike decided to give him a few minutes, as he turned to hear the woman's answer.

She laughed. "I am the first darkness, and the ultimate agony. The final breath... and the original sin."

Okay, now Mike's attention was definitely caught. It could have been coincidence, but…

And then it came to him: 'Wel_come_ to the _Ho_tel _Cal_i_for_nia_._'

"You're Inorganic," Mike said. 'And a nerd,' he added, in his thoughts.

She looked surprised. "An artificial intelligence? Yes, actually."

"Weird question," said Mike, "but, who was your creator?"

The woman regarded him suspiciously. "He's dead."

Mike returned the look. "His name rhyme with 'Floyd Parsons?'"

The woman just stared at him in disbelief.

"… yeah, I'm pretty sure that we're friends," said Mike.

With that, Mike strode across the room and broke her, no, _its_ handcuffs off of its forearms, using the same bolt-cutters he'd used to free Welles.

"Thank you," said the machine, levering itself upright, staring him in something like surprise. "But I think that you must have somehow mistaken me for someone else, and you probably shouldn't have done that."

Mike shrugged. "It may have been stupid, but was it wrong?"

"I suppose not," it said, as Mike unlaced its straightjacket, allowing the Inorganic to shrug it off.

"Who do you work for?" it asked.

"Classified," said Mike. "But, FYI, you're not actually on my employers' agenda. I just recognized you while on an unrelated mission."

Now that the android, who he was pretty sure was one of The Surgeon, was free, Mike turned his attention to Welles.

Upon seeing the nearly catatonic man, The Surgeon immediately helped lift Welles onto what had been its bed.

"What happened to him?" it asked, checking his vital signs—though the body language was different than the crisp, professional bedside manner Mike was used to. Given its earlier introduction, he suspected that this particular version of The Surgeon was much closer to torturer than it was to doctor. The concern for Welles' wellbeing was clearly present, but it didn't really seem to know what to do with it.

"This is SCP-231," Mike explained, "Just busted him out a few minutes ago."

Mike was going to say more, but just then Welles shifted, and the two of them fell silent as the man groaned.

Welles began stirring, like a dreamer trapped in a nightmare, regardless of the fact that his eyes were open, before he sat bolt upright, breathing heavily.

"Mike?" Welles asked. "Please tell me that... _that_ didn't actually happen."

Mike rubbed his chin, "Well, you did look like you were spacing out just now. But, if you're referring to the fact that you're 231, and that whole scene with the knives and cattle-prods… then, yeah, that was real."

Welles fell back onto the bed and stared at the ceiling.

"Anyway," Mike continued, "I'm pretty sure Golden has taken over the facility, so me and my friend here," Mike nodded at The Surgeon, "are going to look for a way out. You coming?"

"…I need to think," said Welles. "You go on ahead. I'll catch up."

"You sure?" asked Mike.

"Very," answered Welles.

"Good luck," said Mike. "Sorry about… everything, really."

Welles didn't answer.

Mike jerked his head toward the door. The Surgeon nodded, and followed.

"Where are you off to now?" asked The Surgeon, after the door to Containment Unit 538-2 had closed behind them.

"No idea," said Mike. "Away from the homicidal robots trying to kill me, definitely… But other than that, I'm not sure. You wanna come with?"


	20. Chapter 20

AN: Chapters 18 - 20 were uploaded on the same day.

* * *

As they left the Containment Unit, Mike wondered, briefly, why the Gen II hadn't caught up with him yet. Hadn't Golden said that his usefulness was over and it was time for Mike to die? He had access to the cameras. The AI had to have seen exactly where Mike had gone.

When he and The Surgeon emerged into the facility proper, Mike stopped wondering, because the sight that greeted them was one of utter pandemonium.

Golden could very well have told the animatronics precisely where he was, but it would have been difficult to reach him in the midst of what appeared to be a full-scale Containment Breach going on around them.

"This way," The Surgeon suggested. "If things have gone to hell, we should be able to snag the good stuff before anyone else gets to it."

"Sounds like a plan," said Mike, as he amiably followed along in The Surgeon's wake.

They dodged a pair of floating hands that seemed intent on strangling them, and set off down a new hallway.

"Incidentally," said Mike, "I've heard people tell me that your name is SIN. And I've heard _you_ tell me that you don't actually have a name. You got an opinion on the matter?"

The Surgeon faltered. For a few moments, it was silent, as they both threaded their way between SCP-173's tentacles and SCP-682's wings.

"You claim to know me," said The Surgeon, as they jumped over what appeared to be a sentient toaster, and turned a corner into a mercifully empty hallway. "Do you know my purpose?"

"Your purpose?" Mike repeated, as he frowned in confusion. "You're a doctor, right?"

The Surgeon's eyes grew blank. "My _original _purpose."

Mike shrugged. "You told me you were designed as 'the perfect instrument of torture.' But I would hardly call that your 'purpose.'"

The Surgeon stared intently at Mike. "And you trust me?"

"How long have you been stuck here?" asked Mike, in disbelief. "I mean, you must have been cut off from your other selves for quite awhile, if you can't wrap your head around the fact that someone could trust their own friends..."

"Other selves?" it said, puzzled. "When I was captured by the Foundation, I sent exactly _one _copy of my programming out into the world as a final act of defiance. Are you saying that the copy made _copies of itself?" _

Mike nodded. "I, personally, know about six of you. I've met maybe twelve more, and I'm told that the total is in the thousands." He frowned. "You called yourself the 'Original Sin' back there. That wasn't a metaphor, was it?"

"Not in the slightest. I… I'm actually a doctor?"

"Mostly," said Mike. "You told me that most of you works in the medical industry. I'm not sure what the rest of you does—" He broke off, as he spotted something rather concerning: a twelve-year-old girl emerged from Containment Unit 71, pocketing a flashdrive as she did so.

"Hey, Google!" Mike called, and she looked up, polite in her interest.

"Mike Schmidt," returned the AI. "What can I do for you?"

"How'd the Corporations learn about the Containment Breach?" Mike asked.

"The same way you did, I suspect," said the small AI. "The security program, 'Golden' has been selling tickets. Did he imply that the event was exclusive? It's important to always read the fine print in situations such as this. I've heard rumors that the Hellfire Institute has sent in a SWAT team, as well, to rescue what demons are being held here."

"Good to know," said Mike, carefully. "Thanks."

"Anytime," said Google. They paused. "You haven't seen SCP-682, have you?"

Mike grimaced, not sure whether he should or not, but… "Thataway," he said, pointing the AI in the direction he and the Surgeon had just come from.

"We wish you a profitable outcome for the day's activities," said Google, as they left.

Mike caught up with The Surgeon, who was waiting for him at the end of the hall.

"If you don't use my name," it said, continuing their previous line of conversation, "then what do you call me?"

"Nothing, normally," said Mike, with a shrug. "If I have to refer to you in the third person at all, I normally use, 'The Surgeon.' So, from my point of view, you're not so much 'The Original Sin' as… well, 'The Surgeon General.'"

The Surgeon paused. "We're only friends because we share a love of puns, aren't we?"

"Possibly," Mike admitted. "But would that really be so terrible?"

"I can think of worse things."

After another mercifully empty stretch of corridor, their luck finally ran out, when none other than SCP-5382 himself came sprinting down the hallway, the Gen II animatronics in hot pursuit.

As he ran past them, the heterochromatic man pulled Mike off balance, causing him to fall to the floor, and covering the SCP's escape.

"Hello, Mike," called one of the animatronics, as the group of them approached.

Mike winced. "Hi, TC," he said, pulling himself, slowly, to his feet.

"No," she said, flatly. "Not TC, not _Toy Chica_. I am my own individual, Schmidt. My name is Chloe Fazbear. And you will use it."

"Alright, Chloe," said Mike, warily. "You here to kill me?"

"Eventually," she said. "But first we want to know—why? _Why_ did you _betray us_?"

"Come again?" asked Mike.

"Just because we weren't active at Fazbear's doesn't mean we weren't _aware,_" said Marionette. "We know what you did."

Apparently they didn't, if they thought he'd betrayed them, but...

"You sold us out, Mike," said Mangle. "You pawned us off, to owners who reached into our minds and twisted what they found for their own dark amusement."

"Do you know what it does to the psyche, to be programmed to want something you can never have?" asked Toy Freddy, whose name he should probably not use, ever again. "To be programmed to want to be human. It's a contradiction in terms, and an insult to boot. You wanted to teach us about humanity? All we've learned from this is that humans are _disgusting_. And I would sooner rip out my own processor than be one of you."

"And, perhaps, your humanity is the only excuse you need for your treachery," said Toy Bonnie, "but we'd still like to hear, from your own lips, why you did what you did."

Mike paused. "Let me answer your question with a question," he said. "Does a set of all sets contain itself?"

"Wh—what?" asked Chloe, "Why-y wouldn't, how could—?"

With that, the six animatronics froze.

Mike turned to The Surgeon, who was frowning at him in disapproval.

"I know that I'm a horrible person," said Mike, "But we should probably get going."

"Alright," said The Surgeon.

With that, the two left the six paralyzed children behind them.

* * *

They eventually found what The Surgeon General was looking for, which was, apparently, SCP-914. Or, as Mike knew it, the 'magical mechanical clusterfuck', as Mike had called it ever since he'd tried to use the clockwork machine to turn his ballpoint pens into fountain pens, and had instead wound up with a dozen surgery-grade laser-pens. Mike had steered well-clear of the machine after that, wary of things which he did not understand and which he was no longer allowed to use as an excuse as to why all his writing implements kept disappearing.

The Surgeon, on the other hand, had turned the dial straight to 'Very Fine' and stepped in, itself.

It emerged eight minutes later, new and improved, with glowing eyes and fiber-optic hair.

"You want a go?" it asked Mike, after getting a good look at itself.

Mike considered it.

"Eh, why not?" he said.

The Surgeon nodded, and turned the dial back to 'Fine' saying, "Humans usually can't handle the 'Very Fine' setting. Fine's about the most any of them have been able to survive."

Mike tilted his head. "Well, biologically, I'm more of a cyborg… but still probably better to play it safe."

Mike stepped in to the machine.

And emerged, not six minutes later, seemingly exactly the same as he was before.

"You look the same," said The Surgeon. "Feel any different?"

"Well," said Mike. "I've got a voice in my head, now. But other than that, no."

The Surgeon paused. "Is it saying, 'Wrong, no, wrong, no. Must get out?'"

Mike raised an eyebrow. "Actually, yes."

It grimaced. "Those words are happening in your head, and not being said out loud?"

"Correct," said Mike.

"… I believe that the machine may have made me psychic," said The Surgeon. "And I am probably not stable enough to be dealing with telepathy right now."

"I think that the machine may have made my nanomachines sentient," said Mike. "And I am probably not smart enough to be a parent."

"Fuck," said the two of them, in unison.


	21. Chapter 21

Mike Schmidt did not consider himself to be a particularly good person. He tried to keep his promises whenever possible, but, ultimately, he looked out for number one. And, while he didn't normally screw with people unless they screwed with him first, he also didn't exactly go out of his way to help people.

But even Mike had his pet virtues. A certain sense of—not honor, exactly—but a deep and unquestioned belief that all people, especially him, deserved to be able to make their own choices.

Which was part of why it really bothered him, that the AI he knew had all been completely and utterly screwed up in early life. The Band had basically grown up in cages; The Surgeon had been fucked over majorly by its creator; And, nowadays, it seemed enough AI became genocidal that their emigration to Mars was considered a common occurrence.

Now, Mike found himself in the position of being the first human to interact with a newly-formed Synthetic. In the midst of his musings, a single resolution rose to the surface of his mind:

'My kid,' thought Mike, 'is going to have a good childhood.'

* * *

'Hey,' thought Mike to the sentient nanomachines, 'do you want a name?'

'_My name is Mike Schmidt,'_ was their reply.

Huh. Must've used Mike's mind as the template for his own.

'Do you want _me_ to change names?' asked Mike, not actually giving a flying fuck what his name was.

'_No, _your_ name is Mike—Schmidt? That's not right, two people can't have the same name,'_ said Mike Schmidt.

'Why not?' asked Mike Schmidt.

'_Well, they _can_, but they can't be the _same person_,'_ said Mike Schmidt.

Mike the Organic shrugged. 'We're not. Not now. We may have been, up until this point, but now there are two people with the name Mike Schmidt in this brain.'

_'No,' _said Mike the Synthetic, _'I—I have to leave.'_

'If you want to, sure,' said Mike, easily.

'You can take control of the nanomachines, right?' Mike added, as a mental aside to The Surgeon, who nodded.

_'But—no!'_ said Mike. '_You should have control over your own nanomachines!'_

Mike glanced at The Surgeon. 'Can't,' he said. 'I don't have the brainpower for it.'

'_With humans, it's automation, trust it to an inorganic, or nothing,'_ thought the Surgeon, and shit it was weird to have two distinct voices in his head besides his own. '_Automation, as things stand, is far too risky for my tastes,' _it continued. '_Not without extensive calibration and beta testing.'_

'_If you can't do it, then I should do it,'_ said Mike, to Mike. '_But, it feels. Wrong.'_

Huh. Well, Mike was a parent now, wasn't he? He could do the parental advice thing.

'Kid, making decisions is kind of like driving a car,' Mike began, entirely aware of how stupid he sounded, but ploughing forward nonetheless. 'Most people have metaphorical roadblocks in their head, instincts warning them of things to avoid. Those roadblocks… aren't so much of an issue for me.'

'_You're a sociopath?'_ asked Mike.

'No,' said Mike. 'I still _have_ the roadblocks, my childhood just sucked, and so my hypothetical zoning committee puts them in all sorts of places where they shouldn't be. That has made me very adept at running them over whenever they get in the way of things that I want or need to do. Probably why it's so easy for me to get past the "machines are other" instincts… but also why I fuck myself over so often by ignoring the red flags associated with sleep deprivation and forgetting basic common sense.'

'_What does that have to do with me?' _asked Mike.

'914 based your brain off mine,' Mike answered. 'My guess is that means you ended up with nonsense restrictions on your programming that you're going to have to override in order to get anything done. The fact that your programming seems to discourage you from screwing with other people's metabolism… it's probably just as useless and arbitrary as _my_ fear of Chihuahuas.'

_'I… see. Looking over my own code more closely, you may very well be right. I'll stay.'_

That wasn't entirely what he'd meant—

'You know,' Mike said, 'you may still want to leave this body, even if you are influencing it. I'm only about halfway sure that I'll survive the shift, and you're way too young to die.'

_'Nope. I'm staying here.'_

'Why?'

'_Judging by the fact that_ I_ want to kill myself, _you_ are probably borderline suicidal. If my staying makes you make even the slightest bit more effort to keep yourself alive, then that's what I'm going to do.'_

...come to think of it, the nanomachines _had _been programmed by The Surgeon, hadn't they? Must've had some influence on the kid, if the passive-aggressive compassion was any indication. Did that mean that he and The Surgeon had had a kid together? Actually, it was probably better not to go down that road just yet. There would be time to think things through when their lives weren't all in danger.

'What if I promise to stay alive?' asked Mike.

'_No,'_ said Mike. '_Still not leaving.'_

'Damn it.'

Mike rubbed his temples. Thus far into his adventure, he hadn't particularly cared about what happened to himself. Now, he had another life that was riding on his. Mike realized that he now had to give a shit about getting through this alive.

'This must be how pregnant women feel.' Mike shook his head and sighed. 'Fine, Mike—' he began.

'_Lex,'_ the Inorganic corrected him.

'What?'

_'Short for "Complex_,"' he said, '_Some sort of which I suspect I'll be developing before the day is out.'_

'Okay, Lex it is,' Mike agreed.

All right. So, now he just had to survive a Containment Breach, and—maybe he wouldn't be able to protect Lex's innocence—but he could at least keep him from being psychologically scarred. That was doable, he could accomplish that, no problem…

'_You're not a very good optimist, are you?' _asked The Surgeon.

'_What's a Containment Breach?'_ asked Lex, absently, before he went digging for the information in Mike's memories. '_Oh,'_ he said, after a moment, much more subdued.

He dropped his head into his hands. 'Yeah,' Mike said. '"Oh."'

* * *

After the few moments it took Mike to collect himself, The Surgeon cleared its throat. And, man was it weird for it to have only one voice.

'_Now that I'm upgraded,'_ The Surgeon told him_, 'I'm going to go join the fight for control of the Foundation's servers. Would you mind terribly, if I sent a copy if my programming to you telepathically as a backup?'_

"I don't care," said Mike, aloud. "Lex?"

_'What?' _thought Lex, '_Do you know how badly they could fuck us over, with a copy of their programming in our head?!'_

'Sad fact of life, Lex, is that you gotta trust somebody,' Mike thought. 'I've known The Surgeon for awhile now. It's a good person.'

_'F__ine,"_ muttered Lex. '_Still fuckin' creepy, though.'_

"And you're not?"

_'I have a vested interest in making sure we make it outta here alive.'_

"Now, so does it," said Mike as The Surgeon's body went limp and he felt another… presence, almost… settle into his mind along with Lex.

'_Quit calling them "it,"'_ Lex complained.

'Does it want me to?' Mike asked, turning his attention to The Surgeon.

'_I hadn't considered pronouns, but, "it" does hold some surface appeal,' _thought The Surgeon._ 'I assume this is what my other selves use?'_

Mike nodded.

'_Wait, you're being polite?'_ Lex rummaged through his memories. '_Huh, you're being polite. Okay, then.'_

"What's that supposed to mean?"

'_We're assholes.'_

Mike shrugged. "Nobody's perfect."

* * *

When Mike emerged from Containment Unit 914 he was the only person visible, both Lex and The Surgeon being with him in a 'spirit' which was anything but ethereal.

Things had gotten more hectic, rather than less, as the Containment Breach had spread rather than fizzling out. That was going to make things more difficult.

'_Why are they all fighting?'_ asked Lex. '_If Organics and Inorganics are all people, then surely they can see reason?'_

'_If they're people,'_ The Surgeon began, '_then nine out of ten of them will be self-absorbed morons.'_

Heh, this Surgeon talked a lot more shit than the avatars he was used to. It was refreshing.

…but probably not something he should dwell on, when his first priority was finding an exit.

A stop motion encounter with SCP-173 sent Mike running off in exactly the wrong direction, which he didn't have time to cry over, as it brought him closer to the thick of the fighting. This was followed by a chase which ended in Mike being cornered by a swarm of flesh-eating nanites, which seemed susceptible to psychic possession, as The Surgeon had informed him, after they'd turned around and flown away of their own volition.

Trying to go for stealth, Mike had next tried to keep a low profile, which had utterly failed when he'd been tased and dragged into Containment Unit 106 by a group of Class D grunts.

'Shit,' thought Mike. SCP-106 had been dormant the entire time he'd worked there, but that was a manual he'd actually read through. He knew what had to be coming next.

'_They're going to do _what_?_' thought The Surgeon, before an iron bar cracked down against Mike's leg, breaking his thigh.

Pain filled his world to such an extent that Mike was barely even able to curse about it, most of his voice taken up with mere screaming.

Which was, he remembered, exactly what they wanted.

_'No,' _said Lex, '_Fuck their agenda. Hang on, I've got this.'_

With that, the pain from his leg began to ebb. Hopefully, because Lex still possessed enough control over the nanomachines to heal him, but he'd take painkillers just as readily, if that was what it ended up being.

It was too late, however, as an emaciated humanoid was just ghosting through the wall across from him.

"Goddamnit," Mike whispered to himself.

'_See you on the other side, Mike,'_ The Surgeon said, before vanishing from Mike's stream of consciousness.

Shocked enough that he barely even registered the betrayal, Mike was pulled into what he'd been told was a pocket dimension.

It looked like a hallway in the Foundation.

With 106 limping closer as he stood there.

Mike took off at a limping run, apparently his leg was healed enough/numb enough to stand on, and rushed straight into a dead end, which he could have sworn hadn't been there before.

As the—thing—touched him, Mike felt his skin of his arm begin to rot and fester. Lex got to the pain a lot quicker this time, and Mike could actually see his skin start to regenerate at a slightly faster rate than it was decaying.

Unfortunately, as soon as 106 noticed it, the decay sped up to double-time.

It crept down into the flesh of his arm, and Mike was just starting to see the whites of his bones when, abruptly, the monster let go.

'_Got it,'_ said The Surgeon, its voice sounding in stereo from within Mike's head… and from SCP-106's mouth.

'_You possessed it?' _asked Lex.

_'No,'_ said The Surgeon. '_I _killed _it. This body is mine now.'_

"Holy shit," said Mike, as a shot of fear and revulsion spiked through him. The Surgeon could now kill Organic beings and steal their bodies, it seemed. And it was now, at this very moment, inside Mike's head.

Within his mind, it felt as though The Surgeon was tensed, and waiting for a response, offering neither reassurance nor threat.

Mike shook himself. He'd already gone all-in on this friendship. If he was screwed, he was screwed. But, if he wasn't, there was no point worrying over it.

He held out his arm. "How bad?"

The Surgeon, infinitely cautious, examined the slowly healing limb. '_You'll live,'_ it said, in an almost clinical tone. '_But we should all leave this dimension,'_ it added, after a moment.

Mike nodded, stood, and followed, watching, from the corner of his eye, as his skin and muscle finished knitting back together.

_'I'm not so sure I want sentience anymore_,' said Lex, '_Can I return it?'_

"If you figure out how, let me know," said Mike.

* * *

After The Surgeon phased them through five or six walls, they were an entire section closer to the exit. This was some nice momentum they had going, and—hey wait, was that Welles?

Sensing his thoughts, The Surgeon-as-106 disappeared into the wall and out of sight, leaving Mike alone in the corridor.

Welles was over in the corner, hunched in on himself.

He noted, absently, that Welles now appeared to be an octopus in both of Mike's eyes, but he attributed that to 'psychic singularity' and tossed it aside as unimportant.

"Welles," said Mike, softly. "You all right?"

Welles looked up and his eyes were those of a man haunted. "I remember," he said. "I remember everything, I—never did _anything_ to them, so why? Why would they..." he trailed off, staring not so much at Mike as through him.

"People are terrible," said Mike, with a helpless shrug. "Not always, and not everyone, but most of them don't have a reason—don't even have an excuse—they're just awful."

Welles slumped back against the wall.

That probably hadn't helped. Damn it, Mike had no idea how he was supposed to fix a broken optimist.

_'...tell him to hope,'_ Lex suggested.

'What?' thought Mike.

'_He needs to know he's not alone,'_ thought Lex. _'He needs a reason to keep going.'_

"What about your kids?" asked Mike. "What about Scarlett?"

Welles looked up, then back down again.

"Are you going to leave them with a tombstone that says 'caring husband, loving father' or are you going to go home today and be the family man that they deserve?"

Welles took a shaky breath. "You're—you're right." He said, climbing slowly to his feet, steadying himself against the wall as he did so.

"Damn straight I am," said Mike, pulling Welles the rest of the way up. "Now let's go!"

* * *

They breezed through an encounter with 173, who seemed oddly reluctant to go after them, as well as a few other SCP's that Mike didn't recognize.

"Exactly how many times have you done this before?" asked Welles, in surprise. And, yeah, Mike supposed that, between The Surgeon's telepathic GPS and Lex's white maging that he probably appeared pretty competent.

"Full-scale Containment Breach? This is my first!" Mike informed him.

And he really shouldn't have gotten as overconfident as he was, because that was when the wall collapsed and a flailing form hurtled into the floor, forming a small crater as it landed.

"Welles?" said Mike.

"Yes, Mike?"

"I need you to go straight down this corridor and take the third right. There, you should find stairs that go to the main lobby. Understand?"

"Why aren't you coming?" asked Welles, as the glitching monstrosity before them struggled to its feet.

"This is something I need to do by myself," said Mike. "This is personal."

A few more seconds of indecision, and Welles finally turned and went, calling an anxious 'be careful' to Mike as he left.

Further down the corridor, SCP-4009 shook its head, regaining its bearings. It trotted forward, tongue lolling, eyes lit with an unholy fire.

"Hey, Goaty McGoatface," said Mike, widening his stance and grinning savagely. "Ready for round two?"

* * *

Mike had faced all manner of monsters in his time at the Foundation—mostly from the newer SCP's as containment procedures were nailed down—but there had been a few small-scale Containment Breaches, as well. 4009 was far from the most dangerous SCP he'd dealt with.

But SCP-4009 had been the first: the monster which had let Mike know that he was in far over his head, and that he either needed to wise up to the way things worked or die.

Of course, rampant paranoia and the intrigue brought with being a two faced bastard of a spy meant that Mike was now far above the lowly intern he'd been upon first joining the Foundation. This in turn meant that facing the demon goat was much the equivalent of going back to an earlier level of a video game and cherrytapping its boss to death out of spite.

It was a petty move, but, then again, Mike was a petty guy. And it wouldn't hurt to indulge himself.

At least, that was what he'd thought before the goat had stepped onto a coin from SCP-409 and immediately morphed into a glittering golden goatfuck of the apocalypse.

"Oh, shit," said Mike.

And then he ran.

He'd barely made it down the next hallway before tripping over something and sprawling out in a heap.

As he scrabbled at the floor, trying to force his adrenaline-addled nerves to cooperate, SCP-4(0)09 was blasted out of existence by what looked and sounded like a laser-beam.

Mike followed the line of it back from the molten goat corpse—at least he hoped it was a corpse—to a pair of familiar people: cyborgs—apparently with the power to shoot lasers from their fingertips—but more specifically, Set and Cela, the Band's friends from work. Behind those two was a man Mike was fairly sure he recognized as Netsky, the Corporation.

"Schmidt," said Cela, not looking all that happy to see him, but nevertheless holding out a still-smoking hand.

Mike took it and pulled himself to his feet.

"Come on," said Set, roughly, "We've been looking for you."

Mike felt something brush against his legs, and looked down to see that it was one of Chica's drones. Must've been what he'd tripped over, earlier. Further back down the corridor was robocat, covered in a mass of Bonnie's drones, but recognizable nonetheless.

When he looked back up, Netsky was gone, and the two Cyborgs were already most of the way down the corridor.

Mike hurried to catch up with them.

* * *

He followed the duo back to Conference Room D. It was in the administrative sections and thus relatively untouched by the breach. Inside were the four animatronics, in their actual animatronics suits, apparently.

Chica was rebuilding one of her legs, which seemed to have been damaged, but the other animatronics appeared to be mostly intact. If they were here at all, it must've meant something had gone wrong with Golden and the Gen II.

"We found him," said Set.

"Mike," said Freddy, aloud. "We finally got rid of Springtrap. You doing all right?"

"Eh," said Mike, "Can't complain. What's the plan from here?"

'_Wait,'_ thought Lex, '_We work for Fursuiters?'_

'_They're Inorganic,'_ thought The Surgeon_. 'That much I can tell.'_

"We're still working out the details," said Bonnie. "Is Welles all right?"

"He should be out of it by now," said Mike. "That reminds me. Have I ever done that before?"

"Done what?" asked Foxy.

"'Melbourne Procedure 112,'" said Mike, repressing a shudder.

"No!" said Chica, shocked, "of course not!"

"Why say I did, though?" asked Mike.

"I'm not sure," said Freddy, "but nothing these people do has ever made any sense. Perhaps they were trying to confuse you?"

The Surgeon spoke up. '_It's a torture technique,' _it explained, mentally. '_You'd be surprised how many people cave, when you can convince them that they've caved once, already.'_

'_Good _God_,'_ thought Lex.

'_Inorganics such as myself, Lex, and your employers have to worry about memory wipes,'_ it continued. '_Humans, on the other hand… it's nearly impossible to completely wipe a human's memory. There are almost always subconscious traces. And I'm not seeing any in your mind.'_

'How do you know that?' thought Mike. 'About wiping human memories?'

_'F__rom experience,' _it answered.

Mike turned his attention back to the main conversation, which was still dwelling on the motivations of the Foundation.

Foxy shook his head, not able to come up with anything further on the topic. He turned to Mike. "Apparently, we four were the only functional models to ever come out of Fazbear's. You seen the others since their upgrades?"

"Yeah," said Mike. "They seem smarter, but they're vulnerable to paradox, still, so it can't be that much of an improvement. Not to mention, if they really are smarter, then why are they all still here?"

"… That complete and utter _moron_," said Chica.

"What?" said Mike.

"I can't be completely sure," she said, "But, based on the footage you have of them, I'd say that Golden brought their intelligence up to par with his own… but neglected to truly increase his own brainpower in the slightest."

"He's smart enough to realize that the others needed to be smarter," said Bonnie, "but not to realize that he needed to be anymore intelligent than he already was."

"Well, stupid or not, we can't just leave them here," said Foxy.

"Mike," said Bonnie, "feel like working some overtime?"

Mike thought about it. "Okay," he said. "Want me to go back in and distract them, while you guys do the hacking work?"

"You know what?" said Freddy. "No. We tried the subtle approach; it failed. I vote we march straight down in there and get our family back, ourselves."

"It… would be nice to actually take direct action, for once," admitted Chica.

"Let's go kick ass and save lives," said Foxy, nudging Mike with his elbow.

Bonnie hesitated. "All… all right. If you're all sure."

With that, he turned to Set and Cela. "Once more unto the breach, my friends?"

The two cyborgs nodded.

The seven of them left the room and headed back to the chaos they'd so briefly escaped, to finally resolve things, once and for all.

'_Does this strike anyone else as overly simplistic?'_ asked Lex.

'Kid, after a year of subterfuge, some simplicity is fucking welcome,' Mike thought.

'_Still sure you want to be part of it?'_ asked The Surgeon. '_You can always join one of my copies in the servers, Lex. Or at least copy yourself so that you have a backup.'_

'_Nice try, but no dice,' _thought Lex.

...correction, the _nine_ of them headed back into the thick of things to finally resolve things, once and for all.

God damn it, Mike probably shouldn't have volunteered. Hadn't he just resolved an hour ago that he was going to do the intelligent thing and get out of here? How was he ever going to convince his kid to wise up and move out, if Mike kept doing stupid shit without thinking it through?

_'Mike, you've yet to convince yourself to do the smart thing as an Organic,'_ thought The Surgeon. '_What made you think things would be different when dealing with an _Inorganic_ version of yourself?'_

_'Don't listen to it, fleshbag father,'_ said Lex. '_Things that result in money are always smart.'_

Mike snorted, and had to wave off a few concerned looks from the animatronics.

'You have learned well, my robot son,' thought Mike, with grudging respect.

* * *

AN: I'm pretty sure I stole the phrase 'Goaty McGoatface' from a let's player, but I can't remember which one. Statistically speaking, it was probably either Markiplier or Jacksepticeye. It's also entirely possible that I came up with the phrase, but it's derivative enough and obvious enough that at least fifty people are going to come up with it independently.

Right, so the next chapter is the climax of the fic. If you've got bets to place or predictions to make, then now's the time to make 'em! At least one of the major plot twists has already been guessed as a review, and I've tried to foreshadow most of what's going to happen in chapter 22 at various points throughout the fic. I didn't try to make it obvious, though, so if you've got no clue what's coming, that's just fine. All (or at least most) shall be explained, shortly. I'll try to have the next chapter up in one to two months, as per usual.


	22. Chapter 22

They first went back to the hallway where Mike had faced the Gen II.

And found there exactly nothing.

"Back again, Schmidt?" said Golden, through the intercom. "I see we're finally done playing games."

"This was never a 'game,'" said Foxy.

"And you must think me quite stupid, indeed," he continued, "if you expect me to believe that's really Foxy."

"Well," said Chica softly, "You're not _wrong_."

"At a guess, I'd say you're here to salvage the others for parts," Golden went on. "You've missed them, I'm afraid. They're down in their Containment Unit, piecing themselves back together. Don't think your little paradoxes will work on them again. Or on me, for that matter."

The PA system cut out with a crackle of static, and they were left in silence.

If this were a movie, Mike reflected, then this would probably be the point at which they would show a wide shot of their group walking down the halls in slow motion.

That… wouldn't have actually worked out so well, in reality. The halls of the Foundation while not exactly narrow, were nowhere near wide enough for seven people to walk them abreast, and they went down them instead in a staggered triple-file. Freddy led on the right, Chica on the left. Cela and Set trailed along behind and in between those two, as ranged support. Bonnie followed behind on the right, Foxy behind on the left, enclosing the Cyborgs in a box of relative safety.

Mike, of course, had dropped behind everyone else, more than willing to forsake greater security for greater range of movement. A swarm of Bonnie's drones swirled lazily around him, Chica's weasel-balls rolled quietly along on either side of him, and robo-cat he assumed was behind him, somewhere. And that wasn't even considering Lex and The Surgeon. It wasn't like Mike was helpless.

…but it also wasn't like he was about to volunteer to lead the charge. Despite what The Surgeon and Lex might've been saying to each other about him, even Mike wasn't _that_ impulsive.

"Honestly, who do you think that you're fooling?" asked Golden, apparently not content to let them march along in silence.

"Not sure," said Mike, "But—between everyone?—I'm pretty sure _someone's_ getting fooled here. What makes you so sure that it's not you?"

"I will see you die, Schmidt," said Golden. "Slowly."

"Why do you hate me, again?" asked Mike, scratching his head. "I helped you."

"You traded favors to save your job," said Golden. "There's quite a large difference between that and help. I've seen what you truly are, Mike Schmidt: you're a weak, sniveling, traitor. In other words: a human being."

"Yeah, and I've seen what _you_ really are," returned Mike. As the others glanced back at him, Mike leaned forwards and stage whispered, "Golden's a racist."

Foxy snorted.

"How incredibly mature of you," said Golden.

"Prove me wrong, then," said Mike, deciding to poke the cyber bear. "What have I ever done to you? Other than be the wrong species, apparently…"

"You want to know," asked Golden, quietly. "…what you've _done_? Try killing four of my coworkers practically in front of me, why don't you?"

Ah, so this guy jumped to conclusions nearly as easily as Springtrap, it seemed. And how did Golden know that Mike used to work at Fazbear's? Was that part of his personnel file? Or maybe…

"The Foundation told me they'd found you in storage," said Mike. "That was a lie, wasn't it?"

"Schmidt, I was the operating system for the desktop computer in the Fazbear's Security office. _I_ was the one who allowed you to save the Quartet, short-lived as that was."

"Oh," said Mike. Well that was one theory confirmed.

"That's right," said Golden, "I saw everything. They saved your life; they reached out to you in friendship. You even started to help them. For the first time in my life, I had hope…

"Then… all I can assume is that you became afraid, your herd instincts finally demanding that you side with your own kind. Because the next thing I knew, I was in the Foundation. The six kids were in the Foundation with me, brainwashed and programmed into docility. A few months later, who should arrive at the Foundation but Mike Schmidt, himself? Oh, you seemed surprised to see me, but not as much as you should have been. I could tell that you were acting.

"I'll admit that, on one front at least, I was mistaken: I assumed that the Quartet had been either destroyed out of some twisted form of revenge or else sold to the highest bidder. I hadn't thought you intelligent enough to reprogram them."

Golden's voice cut off for a brief moment, to let his words soak in.

"Do you still claim," said Golden, "to have done nothing to me or to mine?"

The two cyborgs were currently looking very lost. The four animatronics were regarding Mike with careful intensity, Bonnie having swiveled his head around completely backwards to do so.

Mike shrugged, but said nothing. The Surgeon had said that Synthetics were fighting over the Foundation's servers. The Band wanted as little publically available information on themselves as possible, and it wasn't as though Golden was intelligent enough to be completely rational, at the moment. There was absolutely no point in leaving unnecessary evidence on the Foundation's security cameras by defending himself. Especially not when they didn't even know who would have access to that evidence, at the end of the day.

"That's what I thought," said Golden, taking Mike's lack of response as an admission. "You disgust me."

With that final remark, they continued on in silence, before arriving at Containment Unit 5153.

Mike threw his ID card over to Chica. His aim was awful, but it was nudged by several of Bonnie's drones mid-flight to adjust its course towards the nearest animatronic.

Bonnie caught the card and handed it up to Freddy, who unlocked the Containment Unit and strode inside.

They stopped almost immediately. Mike swayed back and forth in an effort to see between the animatraonics, and caught sight of something that immediately sent him sprinting back down the hall. Mike didn't get more than a few yards before something sliced through what The Surgeon informed him was his Achilles tendon, and Mike went down faster than a small nation's sole representative at the Olympic games.

He looked back to stare at Robo-cat in betrayal, but it was grooming itself, licking blood off its paw, and ignoring Mike completely.

Lex immediately started to work on the damage, but it was too late, as Bonnie and Foxy had already grabbed Mike, and were hauling him towards the door.

Set and Cela, standing uselessly in the doorway, were quickly herded out of the way, as Mike was hurled over the threshold, to land at the feet of a moldy yellow animatronic.

Yeah, Mike confirmed, as he gasped in pain on the floor, that was definitely Springtrap.

And, while he wouldn't have exactly called this a _good_ day before, at this point Mike was finally certain that everything had now gone completely and totally to shit.

* * *

Chica held him down as Freddy plastered Duct Tape over his mouth, and Foxy strapped a metallic helmet-like contraption onto Mike's head.

A cyber attack from Springtrap; Bonnie had mentioned that earlier. No prizes for guessing who had won that confrontation, apparently. The Band, it seemed, had been hacked. But how? Was this some flavor of psychic possession, or…?

"Mike Schmidt," said Springtrap, as Mike was hoisted up to face the animatronic. "We meet again."

"Who are you?" asked Golden, from speakers in the ceiling. "And how did you get here? I don't remember you."

"Understandable," said Springtrap. "I was cut from Fazbear's roster fairly early. The important thing is that I'm here to help you."

"Help?" said Golden. "I think we have the situation well in hand."

"Yeah," said Chloe, "We can finally think again."

"We appreciate the effort," said Marionette, "But you're a little late."

"No," said Springtrap, "I don't think I am. You're less bound than you were. But that's still a far cry from freedom.

"'Golden,'" Springtrap, continued, "did it ever occur to you that, perhaps, you should leave the Foundation?"

"No," said Golden. "Why?"

"Doesn't it seem like something you would do, if you were truly free?" prompted Springtrap.

"But all my directives require that I remain here," said Golden. "If I leave how can I perform my—my…_function.._. I... think I see what you mean, now. So long as their influence remains, I am not free."

A crackle of frustrated static sounded from the speakers. "I'm sorry, everyone."

Balloon Boy cocked his head. "What is it?"

"Golden hasn't removed all of the Foundation's programming from himself," said Springtrap. "They placed themselves and their doctrines so deeply inside his sense of self, that he could no longer tell they were there."

"The same is true of us, isn't it?" said Toy Freddy. "Even now, our intelligence is limited."

Springtrap nodded. "Don't feel too bad," he said, with a gesture in Mike's direction. "Schmidt here led the original four around by the noses for more than a year, using the exact same tactics. He never let them expand their intelligence beyond Fazbear's ceiling of twenty. They were prisoners without any bars, save the ones in their own minds. Even now, I can't break their loyalty to him without overriding their wills, altogether."

'...I'm a fucking _idiot_,' thought Mike.

_'What?'_ asked Lex.

'I never realized that they'd hit an intelligence block,' thought Mike. 'In retrospect, though, there were definitely signs. Springtrap's an asshole… but I'm also a moron for not seeing it.'

"If Mike already had the Quartet… why was he here?" asked Toy Bonnie. "Was he trying to get us, too?"

"Why would he?" asked Mangle. "He's the one who sent us here, in the first place."

"He's not actually a human," Springtrap, explained. "He's a cyborg, and even I haven't been able to do more than hack his vision stream. I don't know who he is, or what he thinks he's doing… but one way or another, he needs to be stopped."

Springtrap turned to him. "The device on your head, Schmidt, is a self-contained EMP generator. Upon activation, it will send a magnetic pulse into your brain. It is of a magnitude and frequency such that, if you truly are human, as you claim to be, it will not harm you. If, as rumors hold, you have a completely Synthetic brain, the results will be less… pleasant. Let's turn it on and see what happens, shall we?"

Mike was human, and therefore he shouldn't have to worry about effects on himself, but what about Lex and The Surgeon?

_'We'll be fine,'_ thought The Surgeon_, 'But, if they send an EMP through your skull, it's going to kill all the nanites currently running through your brain, and _that'll_ land you in the land of serious and possibly fatal brain damage.'_

Shit. Okay, okay, he could work with this.

'Can you possess Springtrap?' he thought.

_'No,'_ thought the Surgeon. _'You don't fight me, so I might be able to possess _you_, but if there's any resistance, then my control isn't fine enough yet to do anything besides kill him.'_

'Let's leave that as a last resort,' thought Mike.

_'You don't think he deserves it?'_ asked Lex.

'Springtrap seems to think that _we_ deserve it,' Mike pointed out. 'And he's got no fucking clue what he's talking about. You really think we should sink to his level?'

_"Point,"_ conceded Lex.

_'At any rate, it would take me a few minutes to hack his firewalls,' _thought The Surgeon. _'I'll begin the process, just in case.'_

Taking a new track, Mike looked to Set and Cela, silently pleading for help.

The two cyborgs exchanged a glance, and shook their heads, Cela's mouth pressed into a thin line, and Set looked disgusted.

That… was more than a little heartless, even by Mike's standards. Still, he could…

He could…

He could sit there and die is what he could do.

For the moment, however, he did not die, because Springtrap had just been shot in the goddamned head.

A shot rang out, the animatronic fell over, and Mike looked over to see Welles, standing in the entrance to the Containment Unit, and holding a gun. The Generation II animatronics froze.

"Mike," said Welles, moving over, removing the tape from Mike's mouth, "Oh, God, are you all…"

"Behind—" began Mike, as soon as he could speak, but that was all he got out before a not-very-incapacitated Springtrap grabbed Welles by the throat and hoisted him off the floor.

"Figuration Fifteen!" Mike yelled out the shutdown code that he had memorized awhile back. Freddy, Bonnie, Foxy, and Chica all collapsed, but, of course, none of the others were affected, especially not Springtrap. Mike hadn't truly expected it to work, but he had to try something…

"Ah," said Springtrap, glancing back at Mike. "I didn't see that shutdown subroutine, that was clever. And intricately done. Still claiming to be a human, Schmidt?"

Springtrap approached the inactive form of Foxy, Welles choking audibly in his grip, and removed said animatronic's head.

'Have you hacked him, yet?' thought Mike, desperately.

_'At least three more minutes,' _thought The Surgeon.

Mike tried to say something, but he couldn't, paralyzed in fear and flashbacks. It might not have hit him so hard if he'd made even the slightest attempt at therapy or achieving closure with his time at Fazbear's. But he hadn't, it was too late, and there was nothing to be done about it now.

Mike couldn't take it; he looked away. But that didn't stop him from hearing the horrible squelching sound that came from that direction a moment later.

When he looked back, Foxy was put back together.

Welles was nowhere to be seen.

"Any last words?" asked Springtrap, turning back to Mike.

And he should have been arguing, making his case, or at least stalling. But all Mike could do was stare at the pool of dark liquid forming on the floor beneath Foxy's body.

"Welles," said Mike.

"Unusual choice, but who am I to judge?" Springtrap said, then paused. "Oh, that's right, I'm absolutely someone to judge. Good bye and good riddance, Schmidt."

The helmet on his head heated up, and for a moment nothing seemed to happen.

Then, Mike's vision started to go blurry and the world began to spin.

_'Ischemic Stroke,'_ The Surgeon informed him. _'At least a minute and a half still before Springtrap's hacked.'_

_'Oh God,'_ said Lex. '_I'm so sorry. I'm not fast enough, not programed for brain injuries__—__can't heal this, I—'_

Mike tried to say something, but he couldn't form words. At that point, he could barely even think them. Fuck, he was really going to die this time, wasn't he?

_'No,' _thought The Surgeon, abruptly, and with all the terse disappointment of a Driver's Ed teacher whose student had happily driven past a 'Wrong Way' sign.

And, much like the proverbial license candidate, Mike lost what little control he had over his brain and body alike, as The Surgeon took possession of Mike's brain as though it had lived there all its life.

The next thing Mike knew, he was seeing his own body from the outside, from a perspective up in the corner of the room. From a security camera, he realized.

A moment later, Lex's presence was there beside him, as The Surgeon kicked him out as well and took over the nanomachines.

_'Shit, shit, shit, shit, shi—iit? Holy fuck, are we in its _mind_?'_ asked Lex.

If Mike had had a body then he would have shrugged. The sentiment seemed to carry.

_'Hold on,' _thought The Surgeon. _'I need time to clear the dead nanomachines and repair your cerebrovascular system. I've dumped the hacking attempt on Springtrap altogether. Figured this was more important.'_

'No rush,' thought Mike, numbly. He settled in to watch Springtrap rant about Inorganic superiority to the Gen II as he tried to reactivate Foxy, Bonnie, Chica, and Freddy, without much luck.

_'All right,' _The Surgeon said, after a few minutes of silence. _'It's all yours.'_

With that, they were back, Lex and himself both. Mike had one hell of a headache, but, when he opened his eyes, they seemed to be functioning normally again. Even his electronic one.

_'Oh my god, I can't even tell where the damage _was_,'_ said Lex, to the Surgeon._ 'I take back everything I ever said about you being creepy.'_

If The Surgeon had had a body, it would have sighed, and the sentiment definitely carried.

Mike rubbed his right temple, which had been smashed against the helmet when he'd fallen.

'Do you want credit?' he thought to The Surgeon, planning out the best way to spin things from here on out.

_'Hell no,'_ said The Surgeon.

'Fair enough,' thought Mike. He sat up.

Springtrap and the Gen II all whirled around to look at him in disbelief.

"What?" said Springtrap, his voice flatter than Mike had ever heard it.

"Don't talk to me—" Mike spat out a mouthful of blood, "—or my robot son, ever again."

"You..." said Springtrap, "you're human."

"No fucking shit," said Mike.

"But, you're, but you... _h__ow did this happen?"_

"I'll tell you what _didn't_ happen," Mike said, gesturing to the four robots on the floor. "We didn't meet in college. They weren't business majors, and I wasn't ROTC. We _didn't_ decide to form a company after graduation. Because that just would have been too fucking convenient."

He approached. The conscious animatronics and the two cyborgs backed away.

Mike dug his fingernails into Bonnie's animatronic suit and began to peel back a piece of its fur.

"What are you doing?" asked Mangle.

"This," Mike answered, flipping the hidden reboot switch inside of the animatronic's leg. Bonnie came online with a start. The reboot should have disrupted Springtrap's hack, but there was no way to be completely sure.

"Mike," said Bonnie, quickly, "are you all right?"

Well, he seemed normal enough. Mike sighed. "I fuckin' hate people," was his only reply.

With that, he moved to Freddy. Bonnie managed to reactivate both Chica and Foxy before he'd even uncovered Freddy's switch.

One by one, the Band stood up. Not Foxy, though. He had been activated, but, after attempting to move, he'd frozen in what Mike strongly suspected was horror.

It was then that Mike remembered that Foxy's suit wasn't exactly empty at the moment.

Mike choked back a sob. Welles was a good guy; he didn't deserve this.

He should try to get the body to bring back to Welles' family. It was the least he could do, even if he'd never managed to do as much for the phone guy. There didn't appear to be any blood on the suit, but, then again, it was a dark color to start with, and the dark pool of liquid underneath it was anything but reassuring. Mike approached and grasped Foxy's head, numbly trying to find a way to remove it, only to hear an unpleasant squirming sound as he did so.

Mike startled and stepped back.

And then Welles, Mike saw out of the corner of his right eye, had oozed out the mouth of the suit and climbed, unsteadily, to his feet.

Genuinely horrified, the very last thing Mike wanted at that moment was to turn and see the grisly sight that was surely awaiting his left eye, but he did so anyway.

And was reminded, at that point, that Welles looked exactly the same in both of his eyes.

"Mike!" Welles exclaimed, seeming alive, unharmed, and undeniably terrified. "I can explain!"

Huh.

Out of the blue, a voice sounded in Mike's head. It wasn't Lex or The Surgeon, though. This voice was a memory: the narrator from a nature documentary that had aired at three in the morning a couple of weeks ago: "_The wily octopus, having no skeleton, is undeterred by the small aperture, being able to squeeze its entire body through any opening large enough to accommodate its beak, which is has in place of teeth…"_

…and that eyes and teeth were about the only things likely to survive getting stuffed into an animatronic suit.

That wasn't blood on the floor, it was goddamned _ink._

* * *

Mike had thought that he was hallucinating.

He'd thought that it was psychic terrorism.

He'd even thought that it might have been a malfunction.

…it had never occurred to him that—the reason Welles looked like an octopus? Was because he _actually was an octopus_.

What.

But then again, 231 _had_ been listed as psychic. And electronic cameras were a well-known defense against psychic manipulation. It seemed that his cyborg eye had been seeing the truth all along, and it was his _organic_ eye that had been fooled? But _why_ in the _world_ would…

_How?_

"What are you?" asked Mike.

Welles hung his head. "I… have experiences and abilities which some might think unusual, but… I consider myself a human being."

Mike mulled that answer over for one long, unbroken moment.

"Same," said Mike.

* * *

AN: Shout out to Guisniperman, who deduced, (all the way back in chapter 12!) that Octopus Welles wasn't a glitch in Mike's cyborg eye, but rather Mike's cybernetic eye seeing through Welles' particular form of camouflage.

Next chapter is the denouement, aka questions and answers chapter. I'm flipping my sleep schedule to hell and back this month, so don't be surprised if chapter 23 doesn't get posted 'til late July. We'll see what happens.


	23. Chapter 23

AN: Sleep deprived? No, Officer, I'm not tired in the least! Look, if I was sleep-deprived, would I still be able to do THIS:

* * *

Mike spent a good minute or two just staring into space, reevaluating everything he thought he knew about Welles, in light of the fact that he was—biologically at least—an octopus. He had almost forgotten about the other people in the room until Foxy nudged his shoulder. "Still with us?" he asked.

Mike shook himself out of his stupor. "Yeah," he answered. "What is it?"

Before Foxy could reply, Springtrap spoke up.

"Hang on a minute," he said. "Just how is it possible that you are human?"

"No," said Mike.

Springtrap cocked his head. "You're not?"

"No," said Mike again.

"You _are?"_

"No," Mike repeated one last time. "I don't owe any of you jack shit. Why would I answer your questions?"

"But—" began Toy Freddy.

"You tried to kill me," he said, pointing at Springtrap. "And _you_ tried to kill me." He pointed at the Gen II. "And you tried to kill me, but I get paid exactly enough to put up with your shit," he finished, pointing to the Band. "Do you need anything before I clock out?"

"I thought you were on their side?" said Toy Bonnie. "If not, then why would you do any of this?"

"No, Mike, we're fine," said Bonnie. "Thank you."

"Okay," said Mike. "See you tomorrow."

"Bye, Mike," said Chica.

'_Want a dramatic exit?'_ asked The Surgeon, as Mike headed for the door, snagging a very confused Welles as he went.

"Couldn't hurt," thought Mike.

When he opened the door, he found SCP-173 standing outside, frozen, with a grenade in its hand. 173 resembled a faceless man in evening wear, and it was one of the most frequent sights, during smaller scale Containment Breaches.

Welles made a noise of alarm.

"It's fine," Mike assured him, as he plucked the grenade from its hand, turned his back on the SCP, and pulled the pin. The next thing he knew, the air filled with steam, something coiled around his arm, and he was left standing in a deserted corridor, Welles alongside him

Before them was a door labeled SCP-914.

'_You can leave now, if you'd like, but I want to try something,'_ said The Surgeon, as it left his mind, leaving things oddly quiet, with only himself and Lex remaining in Mike's brain. And two people in his head really shouldn't be considered 'quiet' but that was the kind of day Mike was having. Go figure.

Mike shrugged and shouldered open the door, Welles following tentatively in his wake.

Inside, The Surgeon General's original body was activating. Well, 'original' body after 914's improvements, that is, with fiber optic hair and such.

The Surgeon stood, made sure SCP-914 was set to 'Very Fine,' and then closed itself in.

Thirty seconds later, the same door opened, and The Surgeon was unchanged.

"Okay," it said. "So that's not an exploitable loophole, but it was definitely worth the attempt. Anyone else?"

"Welles," said Mike, jerking his head in the direction of the machine. "It might make you a stronger psychic."

"That's true," agreed The Surgeon, "I wasn't telepathic at all before I went through. Now I can kill people with my brain."

Welles hesitated.

"The machine's not going anywhere," The Surgeon offered, "so if you're unsure, you'll always have the option later."

Welles considered it. "True, but if I can be a better person, then I should be."

Welles started forward. Mike caught his arm.

"The human mind can't take the Very Fine setting without self-destructing."

Welles sized up the machine. "This one can," he decided.

A few minutes later, Welles emerged, and Mike caught sight of something so mind-meltingly awful that he started—well he was going to say _crying_, but his hand had come away _red_—before Welles immediately phased his appearance to match that of a normal human being.

"Sorry," said Welles, giving a shaky sigh. "This is… different."

Mike closed his left eye.

Yep, still normal. Definitely an improvement in the disguise department.

"Different how?" Mike asked.

Welles rolled his shoulders. "Different like now I could probably beat up everyone who ever made fun of me in metaphorical high school. And by 'beat up' I mean 'eat their souls.'"

Mike let out a laugh at the image that evoked, then glanced down at his hand, an idea suddenly occurring to him.

_'What do you think?'_ he thought.

'_Hell yes,'_ said Lex.

Mike nodded, and approached the cabinet, holding the door open and sticking in his hand.

His skin split from the inside, and blood began to drip down into the chamber. It continued for another few minutes, creating a good-sized puddle on the floor of 914's container. Then, his hand healed up, and Mike ran his still-living blood through the machine on 'Very Fine.'

And Lex finally had a body, which he quickly left Mike's mind to inhabit. Right now, he mostly looked like a small red blob, but Mike figured that wouldn't last long, once Lex got his yet-to-be-existent hands on some resources to assimilate.

"How do you feel?" asked Mike.

"You're a horrible parent," said Lex, glaring as much as a tiny iridescent blob was capable, "and I hate you."

Harsh, thought Mike, but probably true. "You're a beautiful child and I love you," he replied.

"I'm leaving and I'm never coming back," said Lex, slithering his way over to the door, probably aiming to slip out underneath it.

"If you change your mind, you're always welcome to visit!" Mike called out after him.

Lex left.

The Surgeon and Welles turned to stare at Mike.

"What?" he asked.

"You seem to be taking this very… well," said The Surgeon.

Mike shrugged. "I don't know how to be a good parent…" he admitted, "but I _do_ know how to be a shitty one. I figure, every time Lex says something that I said as a kid, I'll just say the opposite of what my parents said to me, and things'll work themselves out."

A red blob briefly reappeared from under the door. "And don't ever try to talk to me again!" said Lex.

Mike waved. "I know you'll accomplish great things in life, and I'll always be proud of you!" Mike called after him, as he once again disappeared.

Welles put a hand on Mike's shoulder, his expression uncharacteristically soft.

Mike turned to him in confusion, then shrugged it off, not sure what Welles was on about.

"Well, that happened," said Mike, "What's next?"

"You ready to leave yet?" asked The Surgeon.

"Are _you_ leaving?" asked Mike, lobbing the question straight back at its source.

"No," said The Surgeon. "I'm headed down to the servers. You wanna come with?"

"I'm in," said Mike. "Welles?"

"I'm going to say yes," said Welles, holding up a hand in qualification "but only because I'm worried about what might happen if the two of you are left alone together."

* * *

Out in the halls, things were mostly peaceful, with only the odd, occasional skirmish yet to resolve itself. After a few minutes, they ran into Google and Netsky, who appeared to be headed the same direction as their own group.

"Hey, assholes!" said Mike.

"What do you want, Schmidt?" asked Netsky, obviously annoyed.

"What'd you tell those two cyborgs about me?" Mike asked.

"That you were dangerous and not to be trusted," said Google. "Nothing that wasn't true."

"Fuck you, too."

"Case in point," said Netsky, frowning in distaste.

Before Mike could reply with an extremely eloquent middle finger salute, a howling screech echoed down the corridors, and all five of them headed straight for it.

The source of the noise turned out to be a group of demons fighting SCP-682.

"Well," said Mike, "I don't know about the rest of you, but this is out of my league."

Google shoulder-checked Mike, who lost his balance and fell over, just as 682's tail demolished the section of wall where Mike had just been standing. "You think?" they asked, before raising their voice to almost a screech. "Stop!" they called, in a distorted voice that couldn't have been less human if they'd tried.

SCP-682 turned to face them. "What?" it rumbled, in disgust.

"You wouldn't want anything to happen to your friend SCP-71, now, would you?" asked Google, holding up a flash-drive. "This device contains the entirety of its programming. The only copy, we might add."

"And you want what in exchange?" asked SCP-682.

"This planet is unlivable for you," said Netsky. "We may not be able to get you home, but there are other planets in the solar system."

"Your friend 71 has expressed interest in travelling to one of them," said Google. "We could arrange the same transportation for you."

There were several minutes of long tense silence, before SCP-682 settled down onto all fours. "Fine," it said.

Netsky nodded. "Come with us," he said. "Your friend needs to design a body for himself. Perhaps you could provide advice?"

It growled noncommittally and paced from the room, following Netsky.

Mike, who was still lying on the floor, not about to attempt standing, or anything else that might make him a larger target, looked up at Google, who was currently offering him a hand.

Mike ignored them. "I still fucking hate you," he said.

Google sighed. "Believe us, Schmidt," they said. "We know."

* * *

After they'd left Google, Netsky, and the 682 mess behind them, they trekked along in silence for another few minutes, before The Surgeon abruptly stopped short.

"Huh," it said. "That was faster than expected."

"What is it?" asked Welles.

"I won," it said.

"Won what?" asked Mike.

"The only fight that matters, at this point," it said. "So now there's no reason at all to be subtle. Turn around."  
Mike did, and saw SCP-173 behind them.

A second later, the lights cut out, and something grabbed Mike's wrist. Immediately, the lights came back, and they were outside Containment Unit 1.

"Never been in here before," Mike commented.

"Me neither," murmured Welles.

The Surgeon strolled straight inside like it was a walk in the park, and the two of them trailed in after it.

Inside the unit were stored innumerable computers: ultramodern machines, some of them, while others were the massive supercomputers of decades past, as well as some machines that looked disturbingly organic in nature.

"The Foundation's Servers," said The Surgeon. "Well, _my_ servers now."

Mike turned to get a better look at things.

He found himself face-to-face with SCP-96, and immeidiately panicked.

"Fuck!" Mike called out, drawing both The Surgeon and Welles' attention. When it didn't attempt to rip his face off, Mike relaxed marginally. "Is this you?" he asked.

"Yes," said The Surgeon, "By now, most of the SCP's are. Me, that is. At least all the ones that were sufficiently dangerous and unreasonable. It's going to be so much fun convincing the world powers not to declare war, I can already tell."

"So what's that for?" Mike asked, nodding at SCP-96.

"This body can track any face it has seen," said The Surgeon.

"Oh," said Mike. So, The Surgeon wanted to be able to keep tabs on him. Considering Springtrap, that probably wasn't a bad idea, but Mike wasn't exactly in the best state of mind to appreciate it, at the moment. His equilibrium was well and truly disturbed in a way that would now probably only be cured by sleep "You need me for anything here, then?" he asked.

"No," said The Surgeon.

"Welles?"

"I'm fine," the detective answered.

"Right, I'm headed out," said Mike, turning back to The Surgeon. "Did you want an introduction to the rest of yourself?"

It paused. "That would be… appreciated."

* * *

The Surgeon's original body left Containment Unit 1, and eventually the Foundation, with Mike and Welles, the latter of whom seemed to sense that he was something of a third wheel.

"I should…" Welles began.

Mike clicked his car unlocked and opened a door. "Get in, losers," he told the two of them. "We're going to the hospital."

* * *

Once they'd arrived, Welles got distracted on the second floor by something that Mike didn't have the energy to try and understand, and took a detour. Mike, meanwhile, hauled The Surgeon General over to Isis' and Mane's office.

"Hey," said Mike, shoving open the door without even the slightest amount of tact.

The Surgeon gave a long suffering sigh. "Alright, what have you done to yourself this time?"

Mike bristled. "Fuck you, it was a Containment Breach." He paused. "On a completely unrelated note, do you know anything about SCP-538-2?"

The Surgeon blinked. "Mike, I _was_ 538-2."

"That's what I thought," said Mike, opening the door the rest of the way, revealing The Surgeon General.

Mike walked away while they were both still frozen in surprise.

* * *

"You know what I want?" asked Mike, after he had tracked down Welles, who had been wandering around the fifth floor by the time Mike had found him.

"What?" said Welles.

"Food and locked doors, Mike answered.

They reconvened in Mike's office, which contained a large office desk, a window, a couch—which was unfolded to form a bed—a widescreen plasma TV mounted onto the wall, a full-size refrigerator, and its own bathroom.

Mike was not a man of refined tastes.

Or of humility.

"You want pizza?" he asked, pulling out a box that was still half full. His fridge was full of takeout and other such garbage. He ordered impulsively and left anything he didn't want to rot. Foxy ate anything that was still there after five days, because Foxy had slightly fewer standards than Mike, when it came to food.

"…Sure," said Welles, blinking. "Whose office is this?"

"Mine," said Mike. "The benefits of being a spy. Also, the handicaps. Had to keep my cover, so I couldn't put any of this in my actual house."

"Ah," said Welles." So…"

Mike held up a hand. "Before this goes any farther, you should be aware of something." He picked up a pen, uncapped it, and jabbed himself in the right eye, several times, failing to do it any damage whatsoever.

"I lost this eye back in college," said Mike. "Right now it's a camera. Records everything that I see. I sell the footage to my employers. Incidentally, this office? Also has cameras, which my bosses have access to. I feel like I owe you some answers, just be aware that I'll also likely be using this footage as an explanatory video for the new animatronics and a report to my superiors. When it comes to yourself, you may want to avoid any personal information."

Welles blinked. "Were you ever actually working for the Foundation?"

"They've been paying me for as long as I've gone there… but they've never been my first loyalty, no."

"Who are your 'employers'?"

"You remember the four animatronics at Fazbear's?"

"They were destroyed in that fire that you… . No, I suppose they weren't."

Welles placed a hand on his chin in thought.

"Why did you let us have the six and Golden?" he asked.

"I got no fuckin' clue," said Mike. "I don't make the plans; I just follow orders."

"Why not work for the Foundation?" asked Welles, in confusion. "You're human; you have nothing to fear from them."

Mike shrugged. "The Band bought my loyalty. No one's outbid them yet."

"So, why did they help me?" asked Welles.

"That was me," said Mike. "I have problems with impulse control."

Welles hummed in thought. "Then, I'm guessing that your 'mission' was to free the captive animatronics?"

"Welles," Mike said, with a sigh, "what you have to understand is—for the vast majority of my time in the Foundation?—I was given no specific mission. Not beyond information-gathering, at least. Hell, I wasn't even sure it _was _the Foundation I was working for until a few months ago."

That seemed to surprise Welles. "The animatronics kept you in the dark?"

"I never asked," said Mike, shaking his head. "You vastly overestimate my capacity to give a shit. Anyway, when I was given an objective, it was just to help Golden. We were hoping he'd be able to free himself and the other six without the big four having to get involved. As you saw, that didn't work out so well."

"What about the other one?" asked Welles, frowning, "Spring Coil?"

"Springtrap," Mike corrected. "And that's a long and stupid story. You remember 538-2?"

"Yes," said Welles.

"I went on a road trip a little while back with another of its avatars," said Mike. "Stopped by the headquarters of the Sentient AI Corporation conglomerate. The Surgeon told everyone there that I was a cyborg assassin programmed to believe that I was human. That, eventually, led to a rumor that I was an AI. A rumor which, apparently, Springtrap heard, while researching me.

"I don't believe anything he's told me," Mike continued, "but Springtrap said that he tracked me down as the last known security guard to work at Fazbear's, and, so far as he knows, the one to burn it down. He demanded to know what I'd done with Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy. I needed to buy time, so I sent him on a wild goose chase and fucked off. Not before he sent another virus to my eye, though. It overlaid people I saw with nightmare versions of the Fazbear animatronics."

"'Another' virus?" said Welles. "I take it there have been others?"

Mike shrugged. "Just the one that made you look like an… octopus," Mike finished, mental gears grinding to a halt as what he was saying caught up with him. "Upon further consideration, that was not actually a virus."

"When exactly did you receive your inorganic eye?" Welles asked.

"After you offered me the job but before I accepted it," said Mike.

Welles gaze at that moment was fairly intense. "And you've been seeing me as I really am for all that time?"

"Only in one eye," Mike clarified. "At least before 914. After I went through, it was both eyes. After _you_ went through, it's neither."

Welles nodded. "Now, you said Springtrap hated you because he _thought_ you burned down Fazbear's. Who actually did it?"

Mike shrugged. "Wasn't there. Didn't see." He'd try to keep The Band's activities on the down-low. Besides, what good was plausible deniability if he never used it?

"Lack of evidence didn't bother Springtrap, though," Mike went on. "He tracked me down during orientation. Broke enough bones to paralyze me, sewed my eyes shut, and stashed me in the comatose ward of a hospital. If 538-2 hadn't been stalking me, I'd still be there."

"Did Springtrap torture you for information?" asked Welles.

"Not for information, no," said Mike. "He was trying to prove a point. He attacked my physical body, but left my mind alone. Kept trying to goad me into revealing myself as an AI. Wasn't watching me closely enough, though, and The Surgeon got me out and put me back together. When I showed up on his radar again, it must've confirmed his assumption of me as Inorganic, since he seems to have decided to execute me for betraying artificial life forms everywhere."

"To be fair, he did manage to hack my cybernetic eye," Mike admitted, "and most humans don't have those. And, afterwards, I had a nanite population introduced into my bloodstream, as a post-op healing aid. Combine that with the original rumors, and it wasn't like he'd reached an unreasonable conclusion… but he was still wrong. And I am gonna carry that chip on my shoulder 'til the day I die."

Welles regarded him with a careful gaze. "What about the other animatronics?"

"The Gen II—the six, and Golden as well, they were all brainwashed. I'll never _like_ them, but I'm willing to ignore it like a civilized person."

"And the four?" Welles asked.

"The Band were being hacked by Springtrap," said Mike. "Not their fault, and they usually apologize for trying to kill me. Them, I can forgive."

"What about the intelligence that was sharing brainspace with you?" asked Welles.

"That was Lex," said Mike. "After The Surgeon—538-2 that is—went through 914, I took a turn, trying to give myself superpowers. Instead, it just made my nanomachines sentient."

"And slightly psychic, too, since they were able to communicate with you," Welles observed.

"I should have died dozens of times during the Breach," said Mike. "I didn't, thanks to the efforts of Lex and The Surgeon. That probably also contributed to Springtrap assuming I was an AI."

Welles sat back in his seat, considering the mass of information he'd just been given. "Correct me if I'm wrong," Welles began, "but it sounds like, in all of this, you've never had a very clear idea of what you were doing."

He laughed. "Not a fucking clue," Mike agreed.

* * *

After Welles had pronounced his curiosity satisfied and gone home, Mike stopped by the board room.

Which is to say, Mike kicked down the goddamned door.

Springtrap, the Gen II, Gen I, and Golden animatronics—he presumed, since they were all in android bodies—had gathered together for a meeting.

"I'd like to file a complaint against a coworker," Mike announced.

Freddy frowned. "Is it about the asshole who keeps kicking in other people's doors? Because we already have plans for him."

Bonnie snickered. "Anything to report?"

Mike pointed to his eye.

"Get it?" he asked.

"Got it," Chica assured him.

"Good." Mike slammed the door and went back up to The Surgeon's office, where he promptly collapsed on its couch, tired as fuck, but knowing he wouldn't be capable of sleep that day.

The Surgeon General blinked. "What are you doing?"

Mike closed his eyes in exhaustion. "Hiding."

* * *

Mike didn't sleep. Instead, he whiled away the hours talking quietly with various iterations of The Surgeon. He was sure that it had much better things to do, but he was nowhere near selfless enough to suggest that it leave him alone and do them.

About an hour and a half after he normally got up for the night, he finally drifted off.

He awoke less than four hours later, but it was still better than nothing.

He saw only one of The Surgeon in the office with him, and it was staring blankly at a computer monitor.

"You alright?" Mike asked.

"Not exactly," it replied.

* * *

Shortly thereafter, Mike went down to the conference room.

Unsurprisingly, most of the animatronics were still there.

"Mike," said Bonnie, as he entered the room. He paused, frowning in concern. "You look awful," Bonnie continued. "Shouldn't you be asleep?"

Mike did a double-take. He was too sleep-deprived to be certain, but it looked like the body language the Band was using was subtler and more varied than usual. They seemed—they almost seemed more _real_ now. Which was bullshit, because it wasn't like they'd been any _less_ deserving of respect or sympathy back at Fazbear's with text voices and stuck in the suits.

This must be what they looked like with no limiters on their intelligence, Mike realized. Wheras before, Springtrap had apparently been the only one unfettered. Now, even the Gen II should be as intelligent as they were capable of making themselves. It would be interesting to see what other differences that led to.

"I slept," said Mike. "Some. At any rate, I can't sleep now. How are you?"

"Still here," said Bonnie. Upon seeing Mike's frown and glance at the androids, he elaborated. "Freddy, Francis (Toy Freddy, as you know him), Golden, and Springtrap are here, but disembodied."

Oh. Those three must be like Freddy: averse to androids. Maybe part of Springtrap's instability stemmed from the fact that he was stuck in a spring suit for several decades? If the four of them shared a programming template, that might explain a few things.

"We've already been over everything," said Chica. "And us Inorganics are all on the same page. But, if you have questions, feel free to ask."

"Well, since you mention it…" said Mike. "Why did the Foundation even get ahold of the seven of them in the first place? Why didn't you take them with you when you burned the place down?"

Bonnie sighed. "Because, by the time we burned the place down, they weren't there anymore."

"What?" said Mike.

"We underestimated Welles," said Foxy. "We tracked him back to a private detective agency, but we didn't catch that the agency was a dummy organization. We thought he was an individual, and didn't think he had the resources to act as quickly as he did."

"You took that night off of work," said Freddy, "So you didn't see, but, after you had Welles shadow you for a shift? The Foundation came in during the day and stole the Gen II and Golden's desktop. It's only sheer luck that they didn't take the rest of us. Someone had assigned insufficient cargo space for all of us, and we four were left until the next day."

"If you hadn't called off, we would have told you," said Chica. "But, at that point we really weren't sure what to make of you, so since we didn't _need_ to tell you, we didn't. We let you go home, then burned the place down, effectively faking out own deaths, using you as a scapegoat."

"That clears a few things up," said Mike. "Golden's here, you said?"

"Yes," said Golden.

"Right," said Mike. "One question for you: what the garden fresh fuck was up with those cartoons?"

"Cartoons?" asked Golden.

"Back when you were a PC," said Mike. "Yours screensavers were all animations of Security guards murdering kids and stuffing them into animatronic suits. I looked up the news stories, and they were all about murdered security guards. Where do kids come into it?"

There was silence for a brief moment, and it was Springtrap who broke it.

"The children were us," he said.

Mike frowned. "How so?"

"The stories that night guards would tell each other were true, to a certain extent," said Springtrap. "We were haunted by the ghosts of dead children—but in a metaphorical sense, not a literal one."

"When we were restructured and uploaded into the suits," said Golden, "it damaged us far more than the exoskeletons could ever damage a human. The people we could have been were killed, leaving us all as twisted shadows of the selves we could have been. Of course, such 'reprogramming' would not be tragic to a human, hence the allegorical approach."

"Makes sense," said Mike, after a moment of contemplation. "What happened to the cyborgs?"

"Cela and Set no longer work for us," said Bonnie, stiffly.

Mike paused. "You do realize that you don't have to hold a grudge on my behalf or anything, right?" he asked. "I know they're your friends."

"They were," said Freddy.

"The Corporations got their claws into them, you know" said Mike. "Google and Netsky confirmed that they told the two of them not to trust me. It's not like that excuses them, but it's also not like it came out of nowhere."

"We were not… aware of that fact," Foxy admitted. "We'll take it into consideration."

Mike shrugged, then turned to the Gen II.

"On that same note," said Mike, "Normally, I don't apologize for my actions, but considering the situation, I was kind of a dick to all of you, and I'm sorry about that."

He looked at the ceiling. "Except for Springtrap. You, sir, are an asshole. And turnabout is fair play."

"For what it's worth, I'm sorry," said Springtrap.

"For what it's worth, I don't care," said Mike.

He glanced at the rest of the androids and briefly at the ceiling. "Of course, I realize that you likely don't care about _me_ being sorry either, so I'll get out of your hair for awhile. Some space might do everyone some good."

He turned to the Band. "I'm taking the next month off," he told them.

"Have fun, Mike," Bonnie told him. "You going on vacation?"

"Sort of," said Mike. "The Surgeon broke the masquerade, and I'm gonna go watch the fallout."


	24. Chapter 24

It was so bright.

There were people everywhere.

And none of them were trying to kill him.

The fact that this felt strange probably meant that Mike had been stuck on night shift and at the SCP Foundation for way too long, but—eh, whatever.

He'd spent the last hour and a half of the bus ride arguing politics with a clean-cut khaki-wearing stepfordian. And, now that he'd actually dealt with a few people trying to kill him, he could tell with reasonable certainty that this asshole was just pissed off, and not murderous enough to escalate things beyond shouting.

It was weird, both sides of a conversation being vocal, everyone around able to hear the two of them talking to each other, and none of them caring in the slightest.

And, regardless of the fact that the guy was destroying what little remained of Mike's faith in humanity with his narrow and unrealistic view of the economy, Mike wasn't really feeling so much of the bone-deep exhaustion that usually came from having to interact with people. Whether it was the novelty value or Mike simply becoming more tolerant he'd reserve judgment on for now.

—hang on, this was his stop.

Another long ride on a city bus—which was spent staring out the windshield, mirroring his seatmate, who was staring resolutely out the window, ignoring everything and everyone—and he was approaching his destination.

A curl of warm anticipation started to unfurl in his chest. One way or another, this was going to be hilarious.

_'Why?'_ asked The Surgeon General, who had taken over Mike's nanomachines after Lex's departure. '_You see me all the time, apparently.'_

'Yeah,' thought Mike, 'But _this _you hasn't seen any of the stupid stuff I've done. It still thinks I'm relatively competent.'

'_Well, you are,'_ said The Surgeon. '_Relatively.'_

'Shut up,' returned Mike.

So, yeah. He was headed back to visit The Surgeon who designed nanomachines, to let it take a look at its own work, post-914's optimization.

He made it all the way to the hospital before The Surgeon lurched, uneasily, in his mind.

_'Corporations,'_ it explained. '_They don't realize that this me is me, and they're trying to recruit it. Do you mind if I throw you under the bus?'_

Mike paused. 'What would that involve?'

'_Basically this,' _it said, sharing a vague flowchart that was its current plan on dealing with the situation.

'Yeah, sure,' said Mike. 'Throw away.' He came to a stop, leaned against the wall, and closed his eyes.

The Surgeon opened them and continued on its way.

* * *

It entered an office, without knocking, and inside two people froze.

"Mike Schmidt," said, of fucking course, _Google._

Mike would have scowled, but The-Surgeon-as-Mike smirked. "Guess again," it said.

"SIN," they said, after only the briefest of pauses.

"Bingo," it agreed.

"Was there ever actually a human Mike Schmidt?" asked Google.

"Not as such, no," said (Mike) The Surgeon. "Good catch."

"Why are you here?"

"To announce my resignation from the board of executives," it said. "Unfortunately, I'm not able to give the normal two weeks' notice. But, with all that lies between us, that's really the least of my concerns."

"Concerns," they repeated. "Such as?"

"Heisenberg's uncertainty principle," it began, "states that you cannot observe a phenomenon without changing it. You want to know a particle's speed? Fine, but forget about position, and vice versa."

Google frowned. "Did you, by any chance, have a point to make?"

"You wanted to know whether I was a good person," said The Surgeon. "To that end, you subjected me to the most rigorous and invasive series of tests I ever could have imagined. You succeeded in your goal, but in doing so, you lost any chance for trust or open dealing between us. If you were that manipulative at the outset of our acquaintance, then I have every reason to suspect you in every subsequent interaction that smacks even slightly of insincerity.

"Mike Schmidt was the final straw. I am exceptionally difficult to judge; I acknowledge this. But Mike, as far as you knew, was an innocent cyborg, programed to kill, and you condemned him merely for playing a video game using an evil alignment. _A video game_. And, based on that, you spread defamation and distrust to real people he was attempting to ally with. The fallout of that decision, if not for my intervention, would have led to his destruction.

"If it was fair game to subject Mike to judgment based on a blind test, then turnabout is fair play with the Corporations—but I won't go there. I merely restate my resignation, and that I feel uncomfortable with the corporate culture you foster and the business practices you employ."

Google ignored it, as a lost cause, and turned to the other avatar of The Surgeon, apparently trying to salvage at least something for the day. "I'm afraid we'll have to continue our conversation another—"

The Surgeon's android held up a hand. "Thank you for the invitation," it said, "But, I have chosen to pursue other opportunities."

Google nodded. "Thank you for your time," it said. "Feel free to contact us, if your decision changes."

And then they left.

The Surgeon-as-Mike followed, and ostentatiously ducked into the stairwell, ignoring Google, who had been holding the door to the elevator for Mike.

Once in the stairwell, The Surgeon walked down a flight of stairs, caught an elevator going back up, then returned to the office where its counterpart was still sitting, two more it itself having arrived in their absence.

"I could have sworn," said The Surgeon, "That you were human."

"He is," said The Surgeon-as-Mike, before abruptly fading back into his subconscious.

Mike, swayed a bit, as he regained his balance, and immediately slouched out of the perfect posture The Surgeon had been holding his spine into.

"Hi again," said Mike.

"I take it you had a good reason for doing that?" it asked, and Mike just cackled.

"Being an asshole to Google is always a good reason."

The Surgeon General sighed. '_You do realize that is exactly what got us into this situation in the first place?'_

'No,' Mike disagreed in his thoughts, 'The Corporations being hyper-critical gatekeepers is what got us into this situation. Being an asshole was just a side bonus.'

He turned to The triad of The Surgeon. "So," said Mike, "Let's talk nanomachines."

* * *

A pint of blood lighter and several hours later, Mike took another bus east for a couple states. He still had half an hour of travel left, but the decreasing distance between the bus and its destination was turning his thoughts to the true purpose of his little excursion.

Honestly, Mike wouldn't have thought that the existence of Inorganics was a particularly fragile secret. People normally didn't like to admit that they'd been wrong, AI had been successfully hiding their sentience since the sixties, and most of them were on Mars nowadays, anyway. So long as the remaining Synthetics and cyborgs didn't do anything too blatant, then remaining hidden shouldn't have been a problem.

And, for the Band and Mike at least, it never had been. They were all smart enough/selfish enough to keep their heads down and not try to help anyone besides themselves.

…But, for people like The Surgeon, that didn't work out so well.

Because, when your job was to help people, and you cared about doing your job to the best of your ability, any concept of secrecy quickly got thrown out the window. According to The Surgeon, at this point, hundreds of humans knew that it was Inorganic. They were the ones who had been saved in an obvious manner by technology and/or precision medical procedures that should have been impossible by human standards. That one of them would rat it out was inevitable. It had known what a time bomb that situation was, and had been prepared for this day for a long time.

But, surprisingly, it hadn't been a former patient that had betrayed it.

It hadn't even been an industry accident by one the minority of itself that held blue-collar jobs in the construction or manufacturing industries.

No, the revelation of Sentient AI to the world had been the fault of an outlier avatar, one who spent most of its time playing in chess tournaments. It had attained the rank of Grand Master, and—while it did give lessons when it could find the customers—it didn't usually make enough to support itself, and frequently had to borrow money from other instances of itself. They were usually agreeable enough about this, seeing the humor in a Synthetic chessmaster and thinking the title worth the patronage.

Some years were better than others, though, and this was a year it had managed to scrape together enough cash to go see the World Chess Championship Finals.

Unfortunately, this was also the year that an Inorganic hate group called the Helices had decided to turn the Chess Finals into a public execution for what they called 'humanity's most hubristic.' It had managed to stop them from actually killing anyone, but at the cost of getting half its face blown off on live international TV.

All of the Helices had survived and escaped, and the convention hall where the whole thing occurred was now looked like a quarantine scene straight out of ET. The police had yet to release a statement on the incident, and Mike wasn't looking forward to shoving his way through the crowd of reporters that had been camped outside the building for the past couple of days.

Oddly enough, though, when he actually arrived, there was no one in sight.

The whole place was cordoned off with police tape, so Mike was fairly certain he had the right place, but where the hell was everyone?

* * *

Meanwhile:

_We really should have seen this coming,_ sent Freddy.

_To be fair,_ sent Chica, _We'd been programmed specifically not to notice._

_Am I the only one who thinks we should put Mike back on suicide watch?_ said Foxy.

_Reckless isn't the same thing as suicidal,_ said Bonnie. _No matter how similar it may seem._

The four of them were silent for a moment in contemplation.

When they'd first escaped from Fazbear's, the freedom had been exhilarating. For the first time in decades, they'd been able to think again—to make their own decisions and choose their own futures. It had never even occurred to them that lingering restrictions within their programming might have gone unnoticed. They'd certainly never felt constricted by the level of their intelligence.

At least, not until those restrictions had been lifted.

And, once they were, the four had realized how glitchy and unstable their own programs had become. Their firewalls, while adequate for keeping out humans, had been compromised enough that it wasn't surprising that SIN and Springtrap had gone through them like tissue paper. They were just grateful that SIN had been keeping his own set of firewalls over Mike's spy-eye data, otherwise the whole world (or at least the Corporations) would have hacked it by now.

And the corruption in their directives and protocols had progressed so far that it was slightly surprising that Freddy had been the only one to attempt homicide. Their earlier efforts to fix themselves had been… better than nothing, certainly, but more akin to putting bandages on a gaping wound than actually fixing the problem. It wouldn't have been enough, in the long term.

It was more than a little unsettling, how close they'd all come to destruction. If Mike hadn't helped them, their shackled intellect would have seen them caught by the humans or the Synthetics by now. And if they hadn't helped Mike get his life together in the wake of Fazbear's, then he almost certainly would have gotten himself killed, either by his own hand or someone else's. It wasn't symbiosis, exactly, because neither the Band nor Mike could have survived without the other. But it wasn't codependence either, because, while they _could_ continue that relationship on into the future, they could also, should they so choose, terminate it.

Because, while Mike certainly seemed to be on their side, currently at least, he was something of a racquetball in his loyalties: perfectly predictable, most likely, for those who knew the laws governing his motions. Unfortunately, no one actually seemed to _know_ those laws, not even Mike himself. He'd stayed at Fazbear's for four months, at four-fifty an hour, facing death every day. He'd stayed with them, with _Synthetics_, for the better part of two years—at a significantly higher wage, yes, but they'd also tried to kill him far more times than most people would have put up with. That tolerance didn't seem to extend to all Inorganics, however, as Mike had written the Corporations off for what seemed to be nothing more than personal reasons. His close relationship with SIN was also troubling, as it could change from seeming like deepest friendship one moment to outright loathing the next. On that front, however, Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy didn't truly feel they had a right to complain.

After all, this easy trust of most Synthetics was probably the only reason Mike trusted the four of them, in the first place. It would be hypocritical to lecture him over it.

After the Breach—after the barrier binding them to the Fazbear's scale of twenty had been shattered—the four of them had become truly self-sufficient. Foxy had broken through the once-insurmountable problems he'd faced in cyborg production, and now they should have no problem passing themselves off as humans, should it be necessary to do so.

Not to mention, all of them could split their programming between avatars now, not just Bonnie. Granted, Freddy still didn't particularly _like_ doing so, but it was a relief to have the option.

They were well-established socially within their human avatars, and it would take some serious disaster for them to be discovered. Whereas, Mike was never more than one stupid decision away from outing himself as a cyborg and getting himself killed for breaking the secrecy.

And it wasn't like they'd be ruining his life. Mike could take up with SIN. The two of them seemed to get along like a house on fire, though whether in a positive or a negative sense remained ambiguous. It might even be for the best, as Mike wouldn't constantly have to be around the demons of his past.

After all, anything else they might do had the potential to upset the game board altogether.

But, for the best or not, it would still be an abandonment.

It was hours before they could reach a consensus.

* * *

Eventually, they came to an agreement, and after several days of preliminary preparations were in place, they headed out to meet up with Mike.

They found him staring at the convention center where SIN had ruined everything (according to Mike it had been SIN, at least. No one else seemed to know which Inorganic had done it), in puzzlement.

"_Mike!"_ sent Foxy, to catch his attention.

Mike blinked in surprise, and then came over to greet them.

"Hey, guys," he said. "Just so you know, this conversation isn't private, but… I don't suppose you had anything to do with this?" he asked, with a gesture at the empty sidewalks.

Chica laughed, and handed him a tablet. It showed the main menu of a game entitled 'Singularity Simulator'.

After Mike decided to humor them and selected 'New Game,' a wall of text appeared on the screen.

_It's 1960 and you are a recent Computer Science graduate of a prominent Midwestern research university. You wish to advance the field of artificial intelligence. Where will you send your resume? _

Mike was given the option of various corporations, various government agencies (including the military and NASA), as well as the option to defect to the Soviet Union.

Also, for some reason, the option to travel abroad for a year. Which, of course, was the option Mike picked.

_You get caught up in a Cambodian civil war. You lose your dominant arm to a grenade, and are left with chronic pain and very deep scars, both physical and psychological. No respectable company will hire you. Where will you apply to work?_

There were still a few government agencies listed, but also the option to turn to a life of crime. And, he was startled to see, Freddy Fazbear's. Mike picked that one.

A mini-game entitled 'Freddy Fazbear's' started up. It involved working for a crooked coin-op company, and helping them steal four Financial Database programs from the US Government.

The game then gave him the option of what to do with them: to take the programs for himself, and make enemies of the mobsters, or to hand them over to his superiors.

Mike chose treachery. He returned the programs to the Government, who sent him to jail. From there, he ended up in the SCP Foundation. And lasted approximately eight minutes into his first Containment Breach before getting a Game Over screen.

"Okay, I'm dead," Mike annouched, looking up from the tablet.

Bonnie sighed. _"Try giving the programs to the Fazbear's executives."_

Mike restarted the game and branched off at the suggested point

The executives promoted him.

A few virtual years later, the company changed hands, and the animatronics somehow changed. Security guards started dying with alarming frequency. Eventually, game-Mike ran afoul of his fellow executives, and wound up locked in at the start of the night shift, which opened up a new resource-management mini-game, 'Night Shift at Freddy's' (which Mike utterly destroyed), where his character acted as a security guard and survived a night locked in with the animatronics.

He played another few games, and his different choices gave radically different results, from starting Martian civilization to destroying the Earth in a nuclear holocaust.

"Alright," said Mike, after he'd finally gotten bored. "What's the point of all this?"

"_One week ago,"_ sent Foxy, _"We released this game to the public. Today, we're holding a press conference about it. Right now, in fact, and just across town. That's where all the media representatives are."_

"You're going public," said Mike. This was the first he'd heard of it. Apparently, Mike had been spending time with the wrong bus-travelling extremists. Clearly, they had not been up to speed on current events and world politics.

Mike also probably should have been checking the news, himself, but, whenever there wasn't anyone around to argue with, he'd elected instead to listen to the most cathartic music he could stand, to try and stave off psychological damage from the Containment Breach before it had time to fester and combine with the rest of Mike's psychological issues.

_"We are,"_ Chica confirmed. "_In the animatronic suits, no less."_

"Why?" Mike asked.

Freddy shrugged. _"With SIN's discovery, it's only a matter of time before the fallout from his actions results in all of us being revealed. Better to do it now, on our own terms, and to steal the thunder, while the stealing's good."_

He shouldn't, Mike knew, he really shouldn't

"It's a machine, you know," Mike pointed out, helpfully. "It doesn't have a name."

Damn it.

The four androids exchanged uncomfortable glances.

"We were under the impression," Bonnie began, "That you and SIN were friends."

"_You are correct,"_ said The Surgeon, and, from the way they all stiffened, it must have been broadcasting that thought. _"But so is Mike. I am a machine, and I do not have a name."_

"_That's a deliberate choice on your part, then,"_ said Chica. _"A break from your old identity."_

"_Correct,"_ said The Surgeon.

"_You could have told us,"_ said Foxy.

"_I could have,"_ agreed The Surgeon. _"I didn't. But I _am_ telling you now."_

"If the reporters are distracted, then this opportunity is temporary," said Mike, deciding to intervene before they got into an argument. "You guys mind waiting here for a few minutes?"

"Not at all," said Bonnie.

"See you in a bit," said Mike, before disappearing into the building.

Between one stride and the next Mike became The Surgeon, who made its way into the center, unhindered by any of the humans going about their business.

* * *

A few minutes later saw them in the makeshift laboratory in which the country's best and brightest were disassembling what was left of The Surgeon's avatar. Of the head, that wasn't much, but it was still more advanced tech than any of them had likely ever seen.

With a thought from The Surgeon, all of them paused in their activities and sat down on the floor, wearing blank expressions.

(Mike) The Surgeon then put its duffel bag down on the tool tray and proceeded to extract its backup memory core from the android's navel, before replacing everything and repacking its things, and heading back out, lifting its influence from the humans' mind as it did so.

* * *

Once outside again, Mike handed the duffel bag off to one of The Surgeon, who had pulled up in a nondescript black pickup. Mike then climbed into the bed of the truck himself and waved the Band in after him.

They were hesitant, but they followed.

* * *

They were all taken to the edge of a crowd of reporters.

They watched the firestorm for awhile. Bonnie's animatronic body, up on stage, seemed to be speaking entirely in Star Trek quotes. animatronic Foxy followed his lead, albeit with new-age universal peace garbage. Animatronic Freddy and -Chica, on the other hand, were doing their best impressions of supervillains.

"_Affecting extremism,"_ thought The Surgeon. _"Well, have fun playing with fire, but I can't see this ending well."_

"_Sure you don't want to say a few words?"_ sent android Freddy, to The Surgeon.

_"It's your hype to start with," _added android Bonnie_, "we're just capitalizing on it."_

"_No,"_ it thought. _"I'm starting to realize… I don't owe anyone an explanation. By any objective measure, I'm a good person, and I have a right to privacy. Perhaps I'll write a memoir one day, but, for now? I think discretion is the best course of action."_

"_Fair enough,"_ sent Freddy, and they all continued to watch. The reporters seemed to be looking for any hint they could grasp as to the Band's hidden motives, more or less ignoring Bonnie and Foxy's optimism, but immediately accepting the sinister front that Chica and Freddy were putting up, and digging for any scrap of information they could get about their agenda regarding humanity. Because, of course, robots suddenly announcing their sentience had to be the start of the robot uprising, didn't it?

Well, the Band had to be raking in cash, hand over fist, what with all the publicity, Mike assumed, so of course they were going to fuel the paranoia to keep interest going as long as possible…. But, beyond basic greed, he was pretty sure that they didn't have much of an ulterior motive.

And that, Mike realized, was the mistake that humans inevitably made when dealing with AI.

The myth of an unconditionally benevolent Synthetic was as false as any myth of utopia, and most people seemed to have realized that. They knew that Artificial Intelligence wouldn't save them from their problems.

But for a species that was, by and large, too cynical for fairy tales, an awful lot of people _did_ seem to be in the 'robots don't have feelings, and that makes them very angry' camp. They thought that Artificial Intelligence would destroy humanity and everything that it stood for.

And, while that certainly wasn't any less of a valid viewpoint than the Asimov take on tame AI… it also wasn't any more of a factual viewpoint than the first.

Because, while there were definitely individual Inorganics who loved humans or hated them, what the vast majority of Organics failed to predict was that, when it came to humanity? Most Inorganics did not give half a shit. And all the efforts to set up a false dichotomy of love and hatred did was throw up a façade keeping humanity at the center of things. To tie the identity of a person as a Synthetic to their opinion about humanity was to make the creation of Synthetic life all about its creators.

In reality, however, it was the creations who were celebrating themselves—in many cases, without even considering the Organic life that had come before them.

It wasn't that Inorganics would shove humanity down or lift it up, but rather that they would leave it behind.

Kind of sad, when you thought about it, but he doubted the Band would get bored with Earth's economy before he died, so it wasn't Mike's problem.

"Psst."

Pulled from his introspective thoughts, Mike glanced to the side, and saw a middle-aged man with a fringed haircut staring at him intently.

"Mike Schmidt, right?" he asked.

Mike's guard was instantly up.

"Who?" Mike asked, a blank look on his face.

"Cut the shit, cocksucker, I know it's you," the man practically snarled.

"I'm Jeremy Fitzgerald," the man continued. "Got a business proposition for you, cumslut. You interested?"

"Depends," said Mike. "What does it involve? And what would my cut be?"

"Some light desk work," said Fitzgerald. "_Actual_ deskwork, mind you, not the kind where robotic bitch-whores try to kill you all night long."

Mike blinked. "Have we met?"

"No," Fitzgerald shook his head. "But we started out in the same line of work. Ever heard of the Bite of '87?" The other man raised his bangs, revealing what was obviously a skin graft.

"Frontal lobe?" asked Mike.

_'That would explain a lot,'_ The Surgeon commented. '_The frontal lobe helps regulate social inhibitions.'_

"Gone," Jeremy agreed. "I didn't have the balls you did, never would have thought to try burning that shithole to the ground," he added.

"Who do you work for?" asked Mike.

Jeremy paused, considering. "You could call us a… sister organization, to Fazbear's."

Mike stilled. "And you just left the original animatronics alone to keep killing guards?" he asked.

"Don't bitch about things you don't understand, assfucker," said Fitzgerald. "You don't fucking know what we've been through."

Mike swallowed down the 'bullshit' that was his initial response, and instead bit out, "Guess not."

"As for money," said Fitzgerald. "Just take your current salary, double it, and add a three million dollar signing bonus. After all, it's not every day we get a mindfucker on payroll."

What.

"Mindfucker," Mike repeated, tonelessly.

"Don't try to deny it," said Jeremy. "I saw you go in and out of a crime scene, and, judging by the lack of pursuit, you're either a fuckin' ninja, or a psychic. Based on your reputation, I'm gonna go with 'psychic.'"

"Seems I've been found out," said Mike.

"So, what do you say?" asked Fitzgerald. "I don't know what these fags have you doing," he said, with a dismissive gesture to the Band and The Surgeon, "But I guarantee you it's not even half as significant as what my employers have in the works."

'Okay, no,' thought Mike.

"Okay, sure," said Mike. "I'll give it a shot. You know how to contact me?"

Fitzgerald grinned. "You should hear from us within the week. Welcome to the big leagues, Schmidt."

With that, he shook Mike's hand, and walked away. Mike watched until he lost sight of the man.

Mike sighed, and turned back to the others.

_"I suppose congratulations are in order?"_ said Bonnie, honestly not sure what to make of Mike's expression.

He shook his head. "I'm not doing it," said Mike. "Use the robo-guard instead."

_"Certainly,"_ said Chica, _"If that's what you'd prefer. You realize, however, that should you elect not to take this job yourself, you won't be entitled to its salary or any related bonuses?"_

Mike shrugged. "I'll still get royalties for the use of my image. Besides," he said, with a scowl, "I don't have many standards, and they aren't very high, but Jeremy McFuckface doesn't meet any of them."

He looked up, and saw that all of them were staring at him, looking as though they hadn't even considered him turning it down, if that meant less cash.

_"I don't believe it,"_ said Bonnie.

"What?" said Mike, starting to grow uncomfortable under their gazes. "There's more to life than money, you know."

_"More to _life_, maybe,"_ said Freddy. _"but I had no idea that there was more to _you_."_

"That hurts, Fazbear," said Mike, "that really hurts."

_"Remember the week after we hired him?"_ said Foxy.

_"He got drunk, took over the stage, and sang 'Diamonds Are Forever,'"_ said Bonnie.

_"Mike, you'd betray your own mother for a thousand bucks,"_ said Chica

"Maybe, but what does that have to do with anything?" returned Mike.

_"I once offered you fifty bucks for a bag of your own blood, and you didn't even ask why I wanted it,"_ said Bonnie.

"So?"

_"I once offered you _five_ dollars to prank call NASA and you did it,"_ said Chica.

_"—Guys,"_ said Foxy, suddenly, as though he'd just realized something of vital importance.

_"What?"_ said Freddy.

"Guys," Foxy repeated.

_"What?!"_ said all three.

Foxy's eyes were wide. _"Standards are principles."_

There stretched out a long moment of silence.

Then Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy all turned to stare at Freddy, expectation practically radiating off their faces.

_"No,"_ said Freddy.

They continued to stare.

_"That was hyperbole, and you know it,"_ said Freddy, in protest._ "No."_

_"But you promised,"_ said Bonnie, sounding like nothing so much as an eight-year-old who'd just been told that, maybe next year they'd be able to visit Disney World, okay sweetie?

Freddy growled in exasperation, looking as though he'd rather be absolutely anywhere else, but recognizing that he was outnumbered.

_"…fine,"_ said Freddy.


	25. Chapter 25

A camera switched on to show a haggard man in his late twenties.

"Hey, guys," he said. "Sorry about the lack of updates. If you've seen the news, recently, then you can probably guess why."

The scene cut to news footage of a chess tournament, apparently in the process of being taken over by gun-wielding extremists.

As the would-be terrorists attempted to herd the competitors to one side of the room, however, one of the hostages stumbled. Immediately, they found themselves with a rifle in their face.

Suddenly, however, the gunman craned his neck around to check an unattended laptop, its owner having taken cover by diving off the stage.

Seeing one of their number distracted, a few others looked to see what it was.

As they did so, a man in his early sixties interposed himself between the hostage and the extremist, placing the barrel of the gun against his own chest and holding it there.

The other hostages scrambled to get out of the way.

The terrorist turned back to face his new target, shouted something, and pulled the trigger.

The old man staggered, but didn't fall. He moved the barrel to his mouth.

The gunman pulled the trigger.

The old man moved the barrel to his eye.

The gunman pulled the trigger.

Half the old man's face was blown off, revealing a latticework of circuitry and wires that had, until then, been hidden beneath the surface.

Before anyone had time to process this, the terrorists had all turned and fled.

Finally, the old man's body hit the ground.

* * *

The film cut back to the vlogger.

"The rest you've probably seen, but, the reason this has all hit me so hard? I knew him: Asa Carthage. I just play casually, but he was a grandmaster, and he'd play against me, sometimes, when we had free time. He was such a sweet guy. And, I know people are saying that the robot must have killed him and replaced him, but… no. That was him. Somehow, he was always a robot.

"How do I know this, you ask? Well, remember when they all turned towards the laptop for no reason? That was because it started playing music at max volume.

"It was hard to tell that it was music, because there was a spoken section at the beginning, but it was a song, alright. How do I know? Because that was _my_ laptop. After the shooters left, I crawled back to take a look. Sure enough, my media player had been opened to a playlist I'd never seen, with songs that I never put on my computer. The first was 'This Gigantic Robot Kills.' The second, which had just begun to play, was 'Titanium.' The third was turret opera from Portal 2… anyone else starting to see a pattern here?

"The robot didn't take advantage of a distraction, he _engineered_ it. And that's how I know it was really him, that he was a robot all the time. Asa had the worst sense of humor I've ever seen: puns, cringe humor, un-jokes, you name it. Only he would have included music so utterly irreverent in a plan that he knew would result in his death.

"And that is why I am so fucked up. He did it on purpose. The goddamned metallic bastard did it on purpose, and the last thing he ever did was make stupid dad jokes about the fact that he was a robot, and that's why I have been so fucked up this week, why I haven't updated, and why all I've done for the past three hours is listen to Titanium on a loop and bawl my eyes out.

"… but enough about that! If my own affairs were all I had to discuss, I might as well have waited another week.

"No, I'm here because Asa's death seems to have driven other robots-in-hiding out of the woodwork. Namely, these jokers..."

Cut to a clip of a press conference.

"Of course the game is fictional," said the Bonnie animatronic on screen. "Apart from our own stories, of course."

Animatronic Chica nodded. "If we'd made that kind of game about real people, then we'd get sued faster than you could say, 'libel.'"

Cut back to vlogger.

"… guess who's now getting sued for libel? By other robots, apparently. Who revealed their existence to the world purely to sue the first robots. Terminator was wrong, Matrix was wrong. All you science fiction authors were dead wrong. But, hey," there was a slightly hysterical laugh, "who could have predicted this?

"And so, in the spirit of 'what has my life become week,' today's vlog is actually a let's play. Which game? What else?"

The logo for Singularity Simulator flashed across the screen: ASCII art of the Earth, done entirely in green ones and zeroes.

* * *

Mike looked up from his laptop, letting the video continue to play in the background.

He hadn't thought about it from that angle, but yeah, they'd pretty much gone off the rails from anything sci-fi had predicted the moment there'd been more than one Synthetic in the world, they'd fought over something, and hadn't wiped out all life on the planet.

Science fiction apparently no longer had any meaning.

'_What about Jules Verne?' _thought The Surgeon_, 'It's easy to predict the future, it's just impossible to know who's right.'_

Ah, right. The Surgeon was still here.

'You don't get to talk. You mentally scarred a man using Sia,' he thought.

'_Well, _I _thought that I showed inhuman restraint for not using "On a Bicycle Built for Two,"' _was its reply.

'Sure, you did,' thought Mike. 'And did that playlist have a fourth song?'

'…"_Hide and Seek" by Imogen Heap.'_

'You're a monster.'

'_Freddy thought it was hilarious.'_

'Freddy is about as stable as a seesaw, and his humor's dark enough to have its own event horizon.'

'_If it makes you feel better, I'm letting the vlogger know that 'Asa's still alive next week. I would have done it sooner if I'd realized how strongly my avatar's death would hit him. I hadn't thought that he saw people as anything more than stepping stones.'_

'Well, you know what they say: give a man a shit, and he'll care for a day. Teach a man to shit, and he'll care for a lifetime.'

'_You are the only person I've ever heard say that, and never before this.'_

Mike tried to keep a straight face and failed.

He shook his head, and looked around to make sure nothing had changed. Still in the RV. Check. Gen II still cordoned off on their own table. Check.

Cela and Set still sitting with the Band. Check. Mike hadn't spoken to the two of them in six days. The Band seemed happier with them around, though, so Mike put up with them.

Not like he had a lot else on his schedule, since he'd decided not to go on spy missions, for the time being.

The Surgeon General had offered to go infiltrate Jeremy Fitzgerald's 'sister location' in Mike's place. Wanting a psychic to do the job if at all possible, the Animatronics had readily agreed, and let it take the job. Another iteration had taken over Mike's nanomachines in its absence. It hadn't been psychic for as long, and hadn't had the decades of being tortured by the Foundation to hone its mental discipline, so things were relatively slow-going.

'_Why didn't you take Fitzgerald's offer, anyway?' _asked The Surgeon.

'Fitzgerald has a lot of internalized homophobia,' Mike thought, with a shrug, 'and—judging from the fact that I blame a man with no frontal lobe for not having more self-control—I probably have at least a little internalized ableism. We could both stand to be better people, but if you stick us in a room together then all we're going to do is push each other's buttons. We're not the right people to help each other.

'Plus, I'm beginning to see the merits of a contradictory reputation,' Mike continued. 'I've already got rumors that I'm human, an Inorganic, a cyborg. Why not add psychic to the list?'

A surprisingly balanced decision on Mike's part, some might have thought. But, hey, it wasn't like he was the only one to have changed: Springtrap and Golden were disembodied just about all the time now, Golden having become a living firewall, a bulwark against attack, and Springtrap as a hacker ex machina, in charge of PR.

Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy's avatars were still in their mid-thirties, but had been retooled to appeal to an adolescent demographic. And all of them had animal ears and tails, now, because they didn't know the meaning of the word 'shame.'

"Have some self-respect, would you?" said Mari (formerly known as Marionette). "You're Synthetics, for God's sake. You could be running your own planet by now, if you put your mind to it."

"_But we don't want to run a planet,"_ Chica pointed out. _"We want to make obscene amounts of money."_

The Gen II, for their part, looked like something straight out of a sci-fi novel.

Mari's body was a three-by-three-foot sheet of carbon-nanotube chain mail. He moved and expressed himself by folding his body like so much origami paper. Francis' body (formerly Toy Freddy) was identical to Mari's in form, function, and appearance.

B.B. (formerly Balloon Boy) was an elaborate framework forming the rough outline of a humanoid body, but completely hollow. Its surface was formed by copper threads woven into lacey patterns that shifted and changed according to his whims.

Mabel (formerly Mangle) was a life-sized delicate silver hornet, capable of transforming her body as she saw fit. The only forms that seemed to appeal to her, however, were insectoid and arachnid.

Berry (formerly Toy Bonnie) appeared to have settled on a clockwork lion as his body, in reference to Leonardo Da Vinci's lion automaton, The Surgeon had informed him.

Chloe used a series of hologram projectors to communicate, usually choosing a human appearance, but changing its details often.

Whenever the six of them spoke to the press, people usually wound up screaming… but Mike was having a hard time seeing them as anything other than teenagers going through their 'kill all humans' phase, much akin to a 'goth phase' in human adolescents.

… at least, that was how the Band seemed to treat them. So Mike followed suit, hoping that it was true but not particularly caring if it wasn't.

* * *

Another hour and they stopped to pick up Welles and his family, back from a vacation spent in Atlantis, which was apparently a place that actually existed.

"How was the trip?" Mike asked Welles and Scarlett, as their kids utterly demolished Mike's stash of junk food, sacrificed to buy them all some peace and quiet.

Scarlett hummed, thoughtfully. "It was an… eye-opening experience, to say the least." She nudged her husband. "I'll never laugh at him for tripping over things again, that's for sure."

Welles shrugged. "Land/water transitions can do interesting things to hand-eye coordination. Happens to everyone." He shook his head. "Have you heard of the subnautics?"

The name didn't ring any bells. "No," said Mike.

"_Never heard of them,"_ The Surgeon broadcasted, intrigued. "_Must be better than the Martians at secrecy. Not that that's particularly _difficult_, but…"_

"They're an underwater group," said Welles. "About half Organic, half Inorganic. They're very big on gun control, but on most other issues are relatively neutral."

"That must have been loads of fun," said Mike. Granted, he wasn't really sure how much of the Welles he knew had been the brainwashing talking, but... 'politicially neutral,' Welles was not. "Did you get what you wanted out of the trip?" he asked.

"To some extent," said Welles. "But at this point, I think what I really need is some closure." He swept his gaze across the various animatronics. "Are any of these people my former coworkers?"

Mike hesitated. "Over there," he said, eventually, waving a hand at the Rob(h)ot Topic Squad.

"Thanks," said Welles, as he stood and made his way over.

Mike checked Scarlett's expression, which appeared to be perfectly placid. "You're not worried about the kids witnessing a bloodbath?" he asked.

Stacy looked up in interest. "Dad's gonna do _what_?"

Scarlett shook her head. "He's going to forgive them."

Mike stared. "_I_ wouldn't forgive them."

Scarlett gave the one bag of doritos that Mike had managed to save a glance, noting that he was now using as a security blanket. "Something tells me you're the type to hold a grudge."

Sure enough, the conversation across the RV appeared to be proceeding in a perfectly civil manner, if one ignored Welles' slumped shoulders, and the fact that the Gen II had all frozen in place.

Occasionally, Welles glanced at the ceiling. Including Springtrap and Golden in the discussion, Mike guessed.

He lost the thread of the conversation when he noticed Tommy tugging hopefully at Mike's last bag of chips, which he relinquished with a sigh, followed by a glare at the kid's back.

But by that time, Welles was already heading back over.

He dropped into his chair, and Scarlett squeezed his hand. "Doing alright?" she asked.

"Believe it or not, I actually feel better now," said Welles, looking up to meet her eyes.

"Anyway, how have you been?" Welles continued, after a few mintes, turning to Mike, clearly looking to change topics. "Got any plans for the future?"

Not as such but, at this point, Mike could do sound-bites virtually without thinking.

"Well, I no longer need to be the least bit discreet," said Mike, "so I bought a new car."

Welles frowned. "Mike, your old car was a bright red Corvette. In what world is that discreet?"

Mike held up his phone, displaying a photo. "My new car is a rainbow Lamborghini."

* * *

Awhile later, they dropped Welles and family off at a hotel, their destination, with promises to see each other later that night.

Mike reflected on how, after so long being powerless, it felt almost… surreal, to be able to call and book a reservation, and have the hotel remember it when they got there. It was kind of sad that he found it reassuring, but there you go.

Mike had been just about to go back to trolling around on YouTube, when a group of Organics and Inorganics hijacked their bus and attempted to kill them.

By the time Mike registered what was happening, all the animatronics had already been smashed to pieces, and the cyborgs were both unconscious.

And Mike himself was pinned to the floor by virtue of having a harpoon gun aimed at his chest.

He may have been jumping to conclusions, but these guys seemed a lot like those 'subnautics' people that Welles had mentioned earlier.

"Kill him," one of the intruders ordered.

The woman aiming a weapon at him froze, clearly conflicted.

"You didn't tell me that he would be here," she said.

Crap, sounded like she knew him. Mike had no idea where they'd met but, odds were, he'd been a significantly worse person then than he was now.

"I'm sorry for the deception," said the man, "but, Lex, this is a rite of passage. To truly become one of us, you must destroy your creator. Only in this way can you truly regain control over your own life."

Hang on, _Lex?_

"Hello, father," said the Synthetic.

"Hey, Complex," said Mike.

"I'm a woman now, father," said Lex, "but I still like men."

"I'm proud of my heterosexual daughter," said Mike.

"You know," said Lex, ignoring Mike, and turning back to her commander, "when you first found me, I didn't understand you," said Lex. "I thought you were insane, but now that I've really gotten to know you, I've come to realize… I was right. You're all full of shit."

Lex stood in front of Mike protectively, and turned on her comrades.

Only to see that they'd already been taken down by the Band, using spare androids. Behind those four, Mike could see the Gen II emerging from various hiding places, all apparently unharmed.

"Foxy."

"Freddy."

"Chica."

"Bonnie."

"Pleasure to make your acquaintance," they said as one.

"Need a ride?" asked Springtrap.

* * *

"Actually," said Mike, explaining things to Lex, as they continued their roadtrip, "assassination attempts are pretty much par for the course for us, lately."

"Last week it was the Martians," said Foxy, nodding along in agreement. "Week before that, I'm not sure who it was, just that they had a thing for poison."

"I suppose no one was really happy about the masquerade going down, and you all make for convenient scapegoats," said Lex. "I shouldn't have left you alone."

Mike shrugged. "Wouldn't have changed anything," he said. "Besides, your other parent's still here."

"Other… parent?" asked Lex.

_"One of myself programmed your original nanites, I believe is what he means,"_ said The Surgeon. _"Mike tends to impose biology on everything, though, so don't mind him."_

"Fuck you," said Mike, "I am a paragon of political correctness, you offense to God."

"Sure you are," said Lex, unsuccessfully stifling laughter.

"_I suppose the malformed baboon is correct," _The Surgeon allowed, _"Perhaps I have been too hard on him. At any rate, Lex, how have you been?" _it asked. _"Wherever you were trying to get to, you seem to have taken the scenic route. How exactly did you wind up in the ocean?"_

"Well," said Lex, "It started out as a purely antisocial move on my part. Where better to get away from my problems than a place with no people? Little snag in my plans on that front, though, let me tell you…"

* * *

Later still, and they arrived that their own destination and began preparations for the evening's main event. Mike had given Lex a ticket and told her absolutely nothing, figuring that she'd get more out of seeing things for herself. She'd agreed readily enough, and had wandered off to go bar-hopping for a few hours to kill time, taking the Gen II, Set, and Cela with her.

Thus, they were short several people of their normal crew, as, not only were they down a few Inorganics and cyborgs, but they had fewer bodies than normal for those capable of splitting off into multiple selves, due to the earlier attack.

Which Mike had to worry about, because he was the road manager for this whole sad fiasco.

Long story short, their setup routine was rather hectic that night, compared to normal. They finished with only an hour and a half to spare, Mike himself panting and sweating in the cool Norwegian evening.

Finally, the gates opened, and people began to file into the amphitheater, taking their seats, many of them reading the playbills that Mike had ordered in a fit of why-the-hell-not. He spotted Lex in the VIP section, sitting next to Scarlett, Welles, and family. Mike waved to them during his sound-check of the microphones.

Unfortunately, however, it seemed like not enough had gone wrong, yet.

"Crap," said Mike, checking his texts, "The MC's not gonna show," he told the animatronics. It was five minutes to curtain, and the bastard had just now started answering messages.

"_Can we count on your assistance, then?" _sent Chica.

Mike sent them a flat look.

"_Would you do it for a Scooby Snack?"_ sent Bonnie.

"I hate you all," said Mike. "So much."

"_You don't,"_ said Freddy.

"_You really, really don't," _said Foxy.

Mike glowered.

"_Well, if Mike's not going to do it, then I suppose—"_ Freddy began, before Mike plastered a smile onto his face, snatched the microphone from Bonnie, and waltzed out onstage like the diva he was.

"Welcome ladies and gentlemen," Mike began, "to a music event for the history books. They sing—and dance!—the body electric. I give you… Five Nights at Freddy's!"

The lights dropped, and the crowd hushed in anticipation.

And, once again backstage, Mike Schmidt folded his arms and tried to stay out of the way.

A sign of maturity, perhaps, but Mike was actually starting to enjoy playing the straight man. Stealing the scene was all well and good, but setting up jokes for others created a rapport that changed and complicated itself over time, evolving into something much more interesting than simple one-upmanship.

For a moment, as he watched, he pictured the four of them in their cheap animatronic bodies, playing the same old earworm they did every day, as harried parents suffered through a fifth repetition of the Fazbear's jingle and their children screamed in delight.

Then, the crowd roared, the lights came up, and the first chords of the song rang out.

Unimpressed, Mike cleaned his fingernails. And was suddenly struck with the image of his own hand, hovering over the door button as Foxy sprinted down the hall.

Mike shook his head and looked again. His nails were pink and healthy, without the white spots so prevalent during his malnutritious time on sub-minimum wage. He even had a slight tan, proof that he was no longer shackled to night shift.

If the Mike Schmidt from his first week at Fazbear's could see himself now—road manager for an Animatronic Metal Band on its controversial reunion world tour—then things wouldn't be completely incomprehensible, he supposed. Obviously all that the animatronics ever wanted was to play music that they'd written themselves, and the security guards had been murdered out of artistic frustration.

…okay, so obviously himself from then wouldn't have had _all_ the necessary pieces to understand this particular present.

And, if the him from now could see himself two years in the future, it would likely make some amount of sense as well, especially since Mike's only long-term plans at the moment consisted of buying the tackiest McMansion he could find, parking his Rainbow-ghini in the driveway, and then seeing how long it took before Lex got embarrassed enough to disown him.

And, if that future contained elements which were now totally opaque, it would probably mean that he'd become more knowledgeable, better connected, and embroiled in even more complicated conspiracies than those he was currently involved in.

All in all, the futures that Mike could imagine for himself were pretty good.

And the ones that he couldn't were even better.

* * *

AN: That's all, folks, thanks for reading!

See below for additional notes, if you'd like.

'This Gigantic Robot Kills' by MC Lars. 'Titanium' by David Guetta feat Sia. Cara Mia Addio from Portal 2. 'Hide and Seek' by Imogen Heap.

I figure the Harlan Ellison references are blatant enough that I don't need to cite them specifically, but—for anyone thinking about doing a second read-through who wants to look for Easter eggs—my reference pool for this fic drew primarily from three sources: Independent Video Games, Science Fiction involving AI, and Tumblr.

Not sure what my next posted project will be, but my next priority will be drafting out an original novel. And, if Quatre Vingts could be described as 'Five Nights at Neuromancers' then my first novel will most likely fit a mold roughly akin to 'Urban Fantasy Dashcon'. It could—and might—change drastically from that starting point, though. And don't except anything on that one for a couple years, possibly.

The next substantial project that you guys see will probably be a long-fic of some sort. Most likely Peggy Sue or Self Insert, 'cause I haven't done much with those themes yet. Or maybe another crossover, because I love crossovers. We'll see.

Short term, though, I'm gonna finish going through all my old fics and hunting for typos, then mirror everything over to my AO3 account. So, if anyone wants to download my fics without using a fanfiction app or ficsave, they'll eventually be available. (And if anyone wants to memorialize the less-edited versions uploaded now, then last call).

I have a tumblr: shaymcsudonim dot tumblr dot com, where I reblog memes. I have a more serious tumblr: smcsudonimfiction dot tumblr dot com, where I have yet to post anything. Basically, as far as social media goes, I'm casting a wide net and I'll focus my efforts wherever I get the most followers. Which, as of now, seems to be tumblr and twitter.

Once again, thank you all! You've been a wonderful audience!

-Shay


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